Engineering Manager - Vehicle Care Platforms

Ford; Chennai District; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 5,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Ford is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a multi-disciplinary team, own the technical architecture, and partner with product and design to deliver customer-focused software. You will ensure operational health, promote scalable engineering practices, and mentor engineers across seniority levels.

The role emphasizes strong leadership, collaboration with product stakeholders, and a culture of ownership and continuous improvement within a fast-paced automotive tech environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, incl. 3+ years in people management.
• Experience leading engineers across multiple seniority levels.
• Strong ownership mindset with ability to drive clarity and accountability.
• Excellent communication with technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a multi-disciplinary engineering team.
• Partner with Product Managers, Designers, and stakeholders to translate customer needs into technical plans.
• Own technical strategy, architecture decisions, and production health.
• Promote secure, scalable, observable engineering practices.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Team management

Cloud platforms AWS/GCP/Azure

API design

Full-stack/backend engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical decision making

Ownership mindset

Communication

Mentoring juniors

Job description

Fords Vehicle Care engineering team is building the future of vehicle ownership. We create the platforms and experiences that help customers understand, maintain, service, and get more value from their vehicles. Our work powers experiences across Ford and Lincoln Apps, dealer-facing tools, and emerging in-vehicle surfaces.

We sit at the intersection of connected vehicle data, AI/LLMs, service intelligence, and customer-centric product design. Our systems turn vehicle and service data into proactive, personalized, and intelligent outcomes for millions of customers at global scale.

We are looking for an Engineering Manager who is both a people leader and a builder. In this role, you will lead a talented, multi-disciplinary engineering team, own the technical strategy, partner closely with product and design, and create an environment where engineers can do their best work. You will have end-to-end ownership of your technical architecture, operational health, product delivery and, most importantly, the growth and well-being of your engineers.

People Leadership and Team Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers across seniority levels.
• Provide senior engineers with autonomy, context, and opportunities to expand their technical leadership.
• Support junior and mid-level engineers through coaching, feedback, and career development.
• Set clear expectations, provide timely performance feedback, and support promotion and growth processes.
• Build an inclusive, collaborative, and psychologically safe team environment where diverse perspectives are valued.
• Partner with recruiting and engineering leadership to attract, hire, and retain strong engineering talent.

Product Partnership and Customer Focus

• Partner with Product Managers, Designers, and business stakeholders to understand customer needs and translate them into technical plans.
• Help the team connect its work to customer and business outcomes.
• Contribute to roadmap planning by balancing customer-facing features, technical debt, reliability, security, and architectural investment.
• Navigate cross-functional dependencies and communicate tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical partners.

Engineering Excellence and Operational Ownership

• Maintain a strong technical pulse without being expected to write production code daily.
• Guide system design, API design, architecture, and technical tradeoff decisions.
• Champion secure, scalable, observable, and maintainable engineering practices.
• Promote a you build it, you run itculture with clear ownership of monitoring, incident response, performance, reliability, and production health.
• Improve the software delivery lifecycle through modern DevOps practices, automated testing, CI/CD, and continuous improvement.
• Help the team deliver high-quality software through clear priorities, sustainable execution, and strong engineering discipline.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years managing and developing software engineering teams.
• Experience leading engineers across multiple seniority levels, including senior or staff-level engineers.
• Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, feedback, performance management, and career development.
• Ability to facilitate technical discussions and guide architecture, design, and operational tradeoffs.
• Strong understanding of modern software architecture, cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, API design, and full-stack or backend engineering practices.
• Experience partnering with product, design, and business stakeholders to deliver customer-focused software.
• Strong ownership mindset with the ability to drive clarity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Effective communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or scaling SaaS platforms, fleet management products, connected vehicle services, telematics platforms, or other high-throughput digital services.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or migrating toward microservices, micro-frontends, cloud-native platforms, or event-driven architectures.
• Familiarity with DevOps, SRE practices, observability, incident management, and continuous delivery.
• Experience working with security, privacy, compliance, or data protection requirements in customer-facing platforms.
• Ability to influence across complex organizations and align teams around technical and product priorities.