Battery Management System Architect

Ford Motor; Dearborn (MI); On-site; USD 87,000 - 166,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Vehicle discount program

Tuition assistance

Paid time off

Job summary

Ford Motor Company is seeking a Battery Management System (BMS) Architect to own the technical architecture, requirements, and verification strategy for high-voltage BMS across Ford's advanced battery programs. You will define interfaces, allocate system requirements, and guide suppliers to ensure robust performance in normal and fault conditions.

You will lead architectural trade studies, verification planning, and safety/cybersecurity concepts, coordinating with hardware, software, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Electronics, Computer, Mechatronics, or Systems Engineering.
• 6+ years in embedded electronic control system development, including 3+ years on battery management or comparable high-voltage electrical systems.
• Deep proficiency in high-voltage battery systems: cell chemistries and their behavior, series-connected string architecture, charge and discharge hardware, isolation monitoring, sensing accuracy, and interlock strategy.
• Demonstrated ownership of system architecture and requirement decomposition on a production program, including requirement release to multiple suppliers or programs.
• Demonstrated experience defining verification methods and acceptance criteria, not requirements alone.
• Working familiarity with functional safety and cybersecurity process standards for embedded control systems— ISO 26262 or IEC 61508, and ISO/SAE 21434 or IEC 62443.
• Ability to read SysML architecture models and Simulink or equivalent behavioral models.
• Fluency in requirements management and traceability tooling.
• Experience leading technical design reviews with suppliers and presenting to senior management.
• Ability and willingness to travel occasionally.

Responsibilities

• Own the BMS architecture and the functional allocation, partitioning, and design rationale across its components and control levels.
• Own product attribute requirements - usable energy, power and current capability, charge and discharge rate, efficiency, and service life - and allocate them into system, subsystem, and component requirements.
• Decompose customer, safety, and program requirements with bidirectional traceability; author and release requirement sets across multiple concurrent programs and suppliers, maintaining a common core with program-specific variants.
• Define operating states and transitions, and the fault handling architecture covering detection, classification, propagation, annunciation, and recovery.
• Define the internal communication architecture, including message sets, timing budgets, and degraded-mode behavior.
• Define measurement and accuracy requirements for voltage, temperature, current, and isolation, and allocate error budgets across the sensing chain.
• Own architectural trade studies and document decisions, alternatives, and rationale.
• Own the design verification strategy and ensure full verification coverage of released requirements, with methods assigned by requirement class.
• Define acceptance criteria, test method, level of test, instrumentation, and evidence to be retained; allocate requirements to analysis, simulation, bench, subsystem, or full-system verification.
• Own requirement-to-verification-to-result traceability and its completeness at each program gate.
• Review and disposition verification results against acceptance criteria; approve deviations, retests, and resulting requirement changes.
• Define verification methods for supplier-executed testing and review returned evidence for method conformance and sufficiency.
• Interrogate test, bench, and field data to assess design performance and close issues to root cause.
• Author and maintain interface control documentation to thermal, power electronics, safety and protection, and higher-level control systems, including software-visible signals, diagnostic, and calibration interfaces.
• Own the functional safety concept to ISO 26262: hazard analysis and risk assessment, integrity level allocation, safety mechanism specification, diagnostic coverage targets, and the safety argument; support FMEA, FMEDA, and safe state definition.
• Author cybersecurity requirements in partnership with the owning cybersecurity organization, aligned to ISO/SAE 21434, and cascade them to suppliers.
• Lead architecture and design reviews with internal teams and suppliers; adjudicate technical deviations and concessions.
• Provide technical direction to hardware, software, controls, and validation engineers, and act as escalation for cross-domain design conflicts.
• Present architecture status, technical risk, and recommendations to senior management

Skills

Electrical engineering

Embedded systems

SysML modeling

Requirement decomposition

Verification strategy

Technical leadership

ISO 26262 / cybersecurity concepts

Travel willingness

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Electronics/Systems Engineering

Master’s degree in related field (advantage)

Tools

JAMA / CodeBeamer

JIRA

SysML modeling tools

MATLAB/Simulink

CANalyzer/CANoe

GitHub

Python

Wireshark

Job description

Description

At Ford, we are the movers of the world and the makers of the future. We get up every day, roll up our sleeves, and build a better world - together.
Our advanced energy team is dedicated to powering the future through advanced electric vehicle battery systems and related electrified energy solutions. As we scale these initiatives, we are seeking technically strong engineers to help establish the foundation for our product execution and safety strategy.

In this position...

The Battery Management System (BMS) Architect owns the technical architecture, requirement set, and verification strategy for high-voltage BMS across Ford's advanced battery programs. The architecture is distributed across multiple BMS components and control levels, with defined interfaces to surrounding electrical, thermal, and safety systems. This role is the technical authority for how the battery management subsystem is partitioned, how its components communicate, and how it behaves in normal and fault conditions.

Responsibilities

What you'll do...

• Architecture and Requirements
  • Own the BMS architecture and the functional allocation, partitioning, and design rationale across its components and control levels.
  • Own product attribute requirements - usable energy, power and current capability, charge and discharge rate, efficiency, and service life - and allocate them into system, subsystem, and component requirements.
  • Decompose customer, safety, and program requirements with bidirectional traceability; author and release requirement sets across multiple concurrent programs and suppliers, maintaining a common core with program-specific variants.
  • Define operating states and transitions, and the fault handling architecture covering detection, classification, propagation, annunciation, and recovery.
  • Define the internal communication architecture, including message sets, timing budgets, and degraded-mode behavior.
  • Define measurement and accuracy requirements for voltage, temperature, current, and isolation, and allocate error budgets across the sensing chain.
  • Own architectural trade studies and document decisions, alternatives, and rationale.
• Verification Basis
  • Own the design verification strategy and ensure full verification coverage of released requirements, with methods assigned by requirement class.
  • Define acceptance criteria, test method, level of test, instrumentation, and evidence to be retained; allocate requirements to analysis, simulation, bench, subsystem, or full-system verification.
  • Own requirement-to-verification-to-result traceability and its completeness at each program gate.
  • Review and disposition verification results against acceptance criteria; approve deviations, retests, and resulting requirement changes.
  • Define verification methods for supplier-executed testing and review returned evidence for method conformance and sufficiency.
  • Interrogate test, bench, and field data to assess design performance and close issues to root cause.
• Interfaces, Safety, and Technical Leadership
  • Author and maintain interface control documentation to thermal, power electronics, safety and protection, and higher-level control systems, including software-visible signals, diagnostic, and calibration interfaces.
  • Own the functional safety concept to ISO 26262: hazard analysis and risk assessment, integrity level allocation, safety mechanism specification, diagnostic coverage targets, and the safety argument; support FMEA, FMEDA, and safe state definition.
  • Author cybersecurity requirements in partnership with the owning cybersecurity organization, aligned to ISO/SAE 21434, and cascade them to suppliers.
  • Define interface requirements to externally executed enclosure and packaging design, including board outline, connector position, thermal path, creepage and clearance, grounding, and sealing.
  • Lead architecture and design reviews with internal teams and suppliers; adjudicate technical deviations and concessions.
  • Provide technical direction to hardware, software, controls, and validation engineers, and act as escalation for cross-domain design conflicts.
  • Present architecture status, technical risk, and recommendations to senior management

Qualifications

You’ll have...

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Electronics, Computer, Mechatronics, or Systems Engineering.
• 6+ years in embedded electronic control system development, including 3+ years on battery management or comparable high-voltage electrical systems.
• Deep proficiency in high-voltage battery systems: cell chemistries and their behavior, series-connected string architecture, charge and discharge hardware, contactor and precharge design, isolation monitoring, sensing accuracy, and interlock strategy.
• Demonstrated ownership of system architecture and requirement decomposition on a production program, including requirement release to multiple suppliers or programs.
• Demonstrated experience defining verification methods and acceptance criteria, not requirements alone.
• Working familiarity with functional safety and cybersecurity process standards for embedded control systems— ISO 26262 or IEC 61508, and ISO/SAE 21434 or IEC 62443.
• Ability to read and interpret SysML architecture models and Simulink or equivalent behavioral models sufficiently to review supplier deliverables; software development is not required.
• Fluency in requirements management and traceability tooling.
• Experience leading technical design reviews with suppliers and presenting to senior management.
• Ability and willingness to travel occasionally.

Even better, you may have...

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Model-based systems engineering practice, including SysML architecture modeling.
• Functional safety practice, including hazard analysis, integrity level allocation, and safety case development.
• Ability to read C/C++ source code for review purposes.
• Experience establishing internal engineering ownership of an externally developed electronic system.
• Experience with large series-connected battery systems and production or end-of-line test requirement definition.
• Familiarity with network and bus analysis tools (e.g. CAN/Ethernet traffic analysis, Wireshark) for reviewing supplier communication behavior and diagnosing interface issues.
• Technical Skills
  • System architecture and functional partitioning; product attribute allocation; requirement decomposition and bidirectional traceability; verification strategy, acceptance criteria, and verification level allocation; interface control documentation; operating state and fault handling architecture; measurement accuracy and error budget allocation; functional safety and cybersecurity concept development, FMEA and FMEDA; communication architecture and timing analysis; model-based systems engineering; high-voltage battery and cell-level fundamentals; supplier design assessment and technical review leadership.
    Tools: JAMA and Codebeamer, JIRA, SysML modeling tools, MATLAB/Simulink, CANalyzer/CANoe, GitHub, Python, Wireshark.

As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. We 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 a salary grade 7 and ranges from $86,600-$144,900.

This position is a salary grade 8 and ranges from $99,100-$166,200.

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.

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-