Manager – Manufacturing & Industrial IoT

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.

Enterprise Technology plays a critical part in shaping the future of mobility. If you’re looking for the chance to leverage advanced technology to redefine the transportation landscape, enhance the customer experience and improve people’s lives, this is the opportunity for you. Join us and challenge your IT expertise and analytical skills to help create vehicles that are as smart as you are.

Ford Motor Company is seeking an experienced, hands-on leader to direct Manufacturing IT IIOT Platform organization — the team responsible for building and operating the internal platforms the modernized data pipeline connecting the plant floor to Ford’s Cloud in addition to several solutions which leverage the IIOT Platform. This role owns a mission-critical data pipeline deployed across 40+ manufacturing facilities processing over 345 million transactions per day and supporting 15+ major applications and countless plant developed solutions.

The successful candidate will be a proven builder of solutions: a leader who can engage directly in technical problem-solving when needed — for example, helping teams resolve pipeline failures, unblock tooling integrations, or improve test infrastructure — while also representing the organization’s strategy and roadmap to senior engineering leadership. This role requires the ability to balance long-term strategic planning with disciplined execution, with the objective of consolidating a fragmented tooling landscape into a coherent, self-service developer platform that measurably improves engineering velocity and delivery quality.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• 12+ years of overall technology experience, including leadership of large-scale application, platform, or digital transformation initiatives.

• 8+ years of experience leading engineering teams, developing technical leaders, and delivering complex programs.

• 7+ years of experience in manufacturing technology, industrial systems, or IIoT platforms.

• 5+ years of experience defining technology strategy and roadmaps for cloud-based platforms, data pipelines, or application ecosystems.

• 5+ years of experience with enterprise cloud platforms, application architecture, and system integration, preferably including Google Cloud Platform.

• 5+ years partnering with manufacturing operations and senior business and technology leaders to deliver standardized, scalable solutions.

Technical

• Highly proficient in both manufacturing and development in a modern Web Technology Stack (specifically Angular, Java, Springboot and Mongo DB)
• Highly proficient with web-based application architecture design patterns
• Skilled with managing application data housed in both Mongo DB & SQL (MySQL, GCP BigQuery, MSSQL Studio, etc.)
• Very proficient at creating and communication design specifications via tooling such as Figma
• Highly proficient designing technical platforms including microservices/API driven architectures, service capabilities and application relationship management
• Experience with application integration design, implementation, testing and scaling
• Highly proficient at system design thinking inter- and intra-application
• Skilled at algorithm design
• Familiar and proficient with modern pub/sub architecture patterns, especially as applied to manufacturing
• Experienced with Google Cl0oud Platform capabilities at enterprise scale
• Skilled with service monitoring tooling similar to Splunk/Dynatrace
• Proficient with AI/ML concepts, especially as applied to manufacturing

Manufacturing

• In depth familiarity with vehicle assembly operations
• In-depth familiarity with drivetrain / component manufacturing operations including Engine, Transmission, Gears and Component operations
• In-depth familiarity with stamping operations including press room, blanking and sub-assembly operations.
• Extensive understanding of technology footprint spanning the manufacturing facilities including device ecosystem, network architecture, server/computer room capabilities and application implementation strategy
• Extensive understanding of applications (both legacy and newly developed) required to operate manufacturing facilities in varying regions and business units
• Extensive experience working with manufacturing personnel, spanning hourly operators, supervisors, and lant management up to and including Plant Managers in both technical and non-technical capabilities
• Extensive experience working with senior centralized manufacturing leadership to define, design and build standardized software applications
• Extensive understanding of manufacturing data structures, standards and insight profiles required for both day-to-day and strategic operations

Leadership

• Experience leading teams in a deadline driven working environment
• Skilled at navigating undefined and unclear requirements to reach alignment across organizations
• Developing strong business relationships to ensure frictionless integration and collaboration between IT and Manufacturing business leads
• Experienced in explaining complex technical situations in language manufacturing and IT leadership can understand
• Experience is speaking to large groups and effectively conveying clear and understandable messaging
• Developing high performing teams

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 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 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.

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.

Internal applicants: moving into this role may result in an adjustment to your current compensation based on the posted pay range for this role, taking into consideration your qualifications and other relevant factors.

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

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Domestic relocation 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.

This position is hybrid with a requirement to be onsite four or more days per week. 

#LI-Hybrid

#LI-PW1

Portfolio Strategy & Delivery

• Set and drive the multi-year strategy and roadmap across the platform and various applications aligning to manufacturing leadership priorities.
• Build and maintain a prioritized backlog of platform capabilities, working with your three leads to sequence work to maximize the creation of business value for our customers.
• Decide what to sunset, consolidate, or modernize across as new technologies emerge while keeping overall platform costs to a minimum — and own the transition plans.
• Align the organization's engineering goals with broader business objectives and the product roadmap, driving execution against committed milestones and release timelines.
• Personally get hands-on when needed: prototype a solution, unblock a stuck migration, or dig into an architecture decision alongside your team rather than only directing from above.

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and grow three engineering leads spanning IIOT data pipeline, Ford Production System (FPS) Zone, Department of Plant Control Centers, Staffing Assignment and Surface Quality products.
• Own staffing and hiring for the organization, ensuring each team has the headcount and skill mix needed to deliver its roadmap.
• Build a high-performing, globally distributed organization; recruit, mentor, and develop technical talent at all levels.
• Create a culture where teams treat the Manufacturing Business as customers — measuring adoption, gathering feedback, and iterating as a product organization.

Stakeholder Engagement & Enterprise Alignment

• Partner with senior engineering, security, and business leaders across the enterprise to define future-state tech stacks, platforms, and ecosystems, and to establish the organizational KPIs and business indicators used to measure performance and quality.
• Act as the primary voice of the portfolio with engineering leadership, translating platform investments into business outcomes (velocity, reliability, cost, risk reduction).
• Engage directly with engineers org-wide to surface pain points, validate solutions, and build trust in the platform team as a genuine enabler, not a gatekeeper.

Engineering Excellence & Emerging Technology

• Champion the communication standards jointly developed with the business Controls organization to preserve scalability and avoid the siloing of data.
• Drive the adoption of the standard tech stack across ET, ATP and plant solution development -balancing productivity gains with code quality, security, and governance.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, cloud services, and vendors (with a strong bias toward GCP) and make build-vs-buy calls that hold up under scale.
• Define and track metrics (performance, adoption, business value) to demonstrate impact and prioritize the roadmap.