In this position...
This role requires a leader who brings deep handsโon engineering experience, having personally designed, built, and operated complex systems earlier in their career, and who now applies that experience to platform strategy, architectural decisionโmaking, and technical leadership at enterprise scale. The Senior Director, Developer Experience and Platform Engineering brings technical credibility, architectural judgment, and engineering leadership to ensure Developer Experience is a firstโclass engineering discipline embedded across the software lifecycle. The role emphasizes handsโon engineering experience, platform ownership, and technical decisionโmaking, while also requiring strong leadership, collaboration, and strategic alignment across the organization.
What Youโll Do... Engineering, Platform & Code Ownership
- Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for Developer Experience platforms, including:
- Developer portals and internal platform products
- CI/CD pipelines and code delivery systems
- Containerโbased developer and runtime environments, including orchestration and lifecycle management
- API platforms, service templates, and established โgolden pathsโ
- Observability, reliability, and operational tooling
- Lead DevX platforms as products, with:
- Clear ownership and accountability
- Roadmaps informed by real developer needs
- Defined reliability, security, and service expectations
- Act as a handsโon technical leader:
- Review architecture, designs, and system patterns
- Apply practical engineering judgment to platform and tooling decisions
- Make informed tradeโoffs across scalability, security, reliability, and usability
Programming Languages, Core Repositories & Code Delivery
- Provide deep technical leadership across polyglot engineering environments, spanning modern backend, frontend, mobile, data, and distributed systems technologies
- Apply strong understanding of multiple programming paradigms (objectโoriented, functional, reactive, eventโdriven) to ensure DevX initiatives align with how engineers actually write and maintain code
- Be accountable for core repository strategy and health, including:
- Code organization and modularization
- Dependency, version, and release management
- Shared libraries, frameworks, and reuse patterns
- Secure, compliant contribution and governance models
- Influence and standardize code delivery practices across the organization, enabling:
- Consistent, automated, and highโquality build and release workflows
- Predictable delivery across both legacy and modern codebases
- Clear ownership and lifecycle management of shared repositories
Strategy Grounded in Engineering Reality
- Define and own a multiโyear Developer Experience strategy aligned with:
- Automotive and industrial software delivery constraints
- Safety, security, and regulatory requirements
- Operating at scale across global regions, time zones, and organizational boundaries
- A broad and evolving technology landscape, spanning legacy systems through modern and emerging (โbleedingโedgeโ) platforms
- Translate strategy into concrete engineering roadmaps that can be executed incrementally and sustainably
- Ensure DevX initiatives reflect real developer workflows, operational constraints, and production realities
- Balance standardization and autonomy through wellโdesigned paved paths that support consistency while enabling innovation
Metrics, Measurement & Continuous Improvement
- Define, own, and continuously evolve Developer Experience KPIs that measure productivity, reliability, code quality, delivery performance, and developer sentiment
- Establish a DevX measurement framework that combines:
- Quantitative engineering metrics (e.g., lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, recovery time)
- Platform usage, adoption, and reliability signals
- Regular developer surveys and qualitative feedback mechanisms to identify friction and unmet needs
- Use DevX KPIs and survey insights to:
- Inform platform, tooling, and investment decisions
- Identify systemic bottlenecks across the software lifecycle
- Measure the effectiveness and impact of DevX initiatives over time
- Ensure metrics are used for continuous improvement, not individual performance management
- Provide clear executiveโlevel visibility into Developer Experience health and trends
AI-Enabled Engineering & Code Quality
- Lead the responsible application of AI across the software development lifecycle, integrating AIโassisted capabilities such as:
- Code authoring, refactoring, and modernization assistance
- Automated code review and static analysis augmentation
- Test generation, defect detection, and coverage improvement
- Developer feedback and productivity tooling
- Ensure AIโenabled solutions:
- Improve code quality, maintainability, and developer experience
- Are integrated into existing developer workflows and CI/CD pipelines
- Meet enterprise standards for security, compliance, intellectual property protection, and ethical use
CrossโFunctional Technical & Delivery Leadership
- Partner closely with:
- Product, Platform, and PDOs to align DevX platforms and tooling with delivery priorities, roadmaps, and outcomes
- Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Engineering
- Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
- Cybersecurity and Compliance teams
- Enterprise Architecture and Product Engineering
- Work with PDOs to ensure Developer Experience investments:
- Support predictable delivery and execution at scale
- Reduce friction across planning, build, test, and release phases
- Serve as a technical peer and trusted advisor to senior engineering, delivery, and infrastructure leaders
- Influence architecture, tooling, and delivery direction through technical credibility and delivery experience
Operational Excellence & Reliability Integration
- Embed Developer Experience into:
- Incident management and postmortems
- Reliability and SRE practices
- Secure software supply chain initiatives
- Change and release management
- Ensure DevX platforms and tooling are:
- Secure and resilient by default
- Observable and operated with production rigor
- Drive a culture of automation, selfโservice, and continuous engineering improvement
- How success is achieved:
- Applying prior handsโon engineering experience to guide platform strategy and architectural decisions
- Maintaining strong technical fluency across languages, tooling, and system design
- Building developer platforms and workflows engineers trust and adopt
- Using data, KPIs, and developer feedback to guide continuous improvement
- Partnering effectively across engineering, PDOs, cloud, reliability, and security organizations
Youโll have... Engineering & Technical Expertise
- 15+ years of experience in software engineering, including:
- Significant handsโon development, system design, and production operations experience
- Direct involvement in building and operating complex, distributed systems
- Demonstrated ability to apply prior engineering experience to platform architecture, code delivery, and technical strategy
- Deep expertise in:
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including production operations at scale
- Containerโbased platforms and orchestration technologies
- CI/CD systems, developer tooling, and code delivery pipelines
- Polyglot software architectures and modern application frameworks
- Observability, reliability, and SRE practices
- Strong working knowledge of:
- Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Multiโcloud and hybrid architecture tradeโoffs
- Solid understanding of:
- Secure software supply chains
- Compliance and regulatory requirements common in automotive environments
Leadership Profile
- An engineeringโfirst leader who has grown from handsโon engineer to senior technical leader
- Leads through technical depth, architectural judgment, and delivery experience
- Comfortable operating at:
- Executiveโlevel strategy discussions
- Deep technical and architectural detail
- Experienced in leading platform or infrastructure engineering organizations building real, production systems
As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builderโฆor all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
- Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
- Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent rampโup programs, subsidized backโup childcare and more
- Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
- Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
- Tuition assistance
- Established and active employee resource groups
- Paid time off for individual and team community service
- A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Yearโs Day
- Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.
This position is a leadership level 4.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.
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