Principal Engineer

Job Description

We made history and now we work to transform the future – for our customers, our communities and our families. You'll see your work on the road every day, helping people move freely and pursue their dreams. At Ford, you can build more than vehicles. Come build what matters.

Ford Pro is a global business within Ford Motor Company focused on delivering productivity solutions to commercial customers. We offer a comprehensive suite of vehicles, charging infrastructure, software, and services tailored to fleet and business needs. Our Ford Pro Intelligence technology team, within the broader Vehicle Cloud and Mobile Division, powers the digital backbone of Ford Pro Telematics and Data Services.

Ford Pro Telematics gives you a near-real-time window into your fleet, providing the data and insights you need to help improve performance, reduce downtime and streamline operations.

Ford Pro Data Services helps customers  keep track of their Ford Pro commercial vehicles by communicating vehicle data directly there software of choice. 

In this role...
The Ford Pro Intelligence (FPI) Telematics team is looking for a highly skilled Principal Engineer to lead the technical vision and build web applications and services that will be useful, reliable, and secure products for our customers. This team creates back-end services, data-intensive pipelines, and APIs that are used to help customers understand, manage, and control their fleets of vehicles via web, mobile, and API applications in a high-scale SaaS environment.

Our stack includes:

• Kotlin/Springboot APIs and ETL processors
• React frontend
• PostgresDB & Redis
• GCP (CloudRun, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, BigTable)

You'll have...

• English proficiency (written and verbal).
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record in a technical leadership and architectural role.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a combination of education and equivalent work experience.
• 5+ year’s experience designing and building scalable, data-intensive web applications and SaaS products.
• 5+ year’s experience with API development in languages like Java or Kotlin, and modern frontend frameworks like React or AngularJS.
• 5+ year’s experience with Relational Databases (like PostgreSQL), NoSQL, and handling high-volume data pipelines.
• Proven experience providing technical leadership across engineering teams, mentoring engineers through architecture and design decisions, and establishing scalable engineering practices, patterns, and delivery standards across complex Agile environments.

Even better, you'll have...

• Exceptional ability to communicate complex architectural concepts to technical experts, Product Managers, Dev Ops, UI/UX Designers, and executive business stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, RESTful interfaces, and OAS standards.
• Extensive experience with Springboot services and enterprise integration patterns.
• Expert-level knowledge of pub/sub architectures, event-driven systems, and cloud-native capabilities.
• Advanced experience with GCP (BigQuery, BigTable, CloudRun) or equivalent enterprise experience with other cloud providers such as AWS or Azure.

You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!

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 builder…or 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 ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care 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 Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

This position is leadership level 5 and ranges from $141,700-$268,300. 

For California candidates, this position is a leadership level 5 and ranges from $148,800-$281,700.
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL5 

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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What you'll do...

The Principal Engineer / Architect will serve as a key technical leader, responsible for driving the architectural vision, designing data-intensive applications, and leading the development of core SaaS platforms, API services, and frontends.

• Architecture and Technical Strategy: Architect, design, and drive the technical roadmap for large-scale, data-intensive SaaS applications that span multiple teams within FPI and partner teams across Ford Engineering.

• Mentorship and Technical Leadership: Act as a force multiplier for the engineering team. Actively lead, mentor, and coach junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.

• Product and Requirements Management: Partner directly with Product, Design, and Business leadership to shape product strategy. Translate complex business needs into scalable architectural designs and technical requirements.

• Project Scoping and Planning: Effectively scope, estimate, and provide architectural blueprints and capacity planning for massive, multi-quarter enterprise initiatives.

• Develop/Test/Deploy: Lead the hands-on development of critical architectural components and complex projects, setting the standard for code quality, system reliability, and deployment practices across the organization.

• Raise the Bar: Elevate the engineering standards across FPI by researching and proposing new internal tooling, architectural patterns, frameworks, and processes to drastically improve efficiency, system performance, and service quality.

• Incident, Problem, Change/Service Requests: Serve as the ultimate technical escalation point for critical incidents. Lead complex root cause analysis (RCA) and drive proactive, systemic problem management and defect prevention initiatives.