Camera Software Engineering Manager

Ford-Motor-Company; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 284,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Paid parental leave

Vehicle discount program

Tuition assistance

Paid time off

Job summary

Ford Motor Company seeks a Camera Software Engineering Manager to own end-to-end delivery of in-vehicle camera features, aligning IVI software with embedded firmware from concept to production release.

Lead cross-functional teams across Android, firmware, hardware/SoC, security, V&V, quality, and manufacturing to ship live video streaming, image capture, ML-powered features, and object detection with robust CI/CD and security practices.

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years leading or managing engineering teams that delivered shipped products.
• Familiarity with camera/video software, including capture pipelines, ISP, streaming, H.264/H.265 codecs, and latency-sensitive real-time systems
• Understanding ML inference and computer-vision workflows for camera apps, including model integration and deployment on constrained platforms
• Solid understanding of Linux OS fundamentals, system-level programming, and driver integration
• Experience owning features end-to-end across application and embedded/firmware layers
• Cross-functional communication and program management skills
• CI/CD, automated testing, and code-quality gates

Responsibilities

• Own camera feature delivery end-to-end across IVI software and embedded firmware.
• Define and refine product requirements, coordinate releases, and establish milestones.
• Translate product requirements into a technical roadmap for IVI and embedded firmware.
• Define, track, and communicate milestones, dependencies, and risks to keep releases on schedule.
• Lead interface contracts between IVI and firmware, including diagnostics and firmware update flows.
• Guide video streaming pipeline architecture and latency optimization.
• Integrate ML and CV capabilities for detection, classification, tracking.
• Coordinate with vehicle network interfaces and automotive Ethernet.
• Define test strategies, integration plans, and acceptance criteria with V&V and QA teams.
• Coordinate software integration, bench testing, and vehicle-level validation.
• Champion CI pipelines, test frameworks, and code-quality gates.
• Partner with security on secure boot, TLS, and provisioning.
• Drive manufacturing readiness including OTA distribution and production flashing workflows.
• Provide regular updates to leadership on progress, risks, and release readiness.

Skills

Camera software

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

CI/CD

ML integration

Linux fundamentals

C/C++

Embedded/firmware

Automotive Ethernet

Tools

OTA tooling

CI/CD pipelines

V&V tooling

Linux driver development tools

Job description

We are seeking a Camera Software Engineering Manager to own the end-to-end delivery of in-vehicle camera features, driving alignment between the IVI software and the embedded camera firmware. This person is accountable for the full feature lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through implementation, integration, validation, manufacturing readiness, and OTA release, across both the IVI software and embedded firmware sides of the stack.

This is a cross-functional leadership role. You will manage engineers and coordinate across Android, firmware, hardware/SoC partners, security, V&V, quality, and manufacturing teams to ship reliable camera capabilities such as live video streaming to the IVI display, image capture, machine-learning-powered features, and object-detection use cases

What you'll do...

Feature Ownership & Delivery

• Work with Product and Program Management organizations to define and refine product requirements, coordinate releases, and establish feature delivery milestones
• Own camera feature delivery end-to-end across the IVI software and the embedded camera firmware, from concept to production release.
• Translate product requirements into a coherent technical roadmap spanning both the IVI application layer and the embedded C/C++ firmware layer.
• Define, track, and communicate milestones, dependencies, and risks; unblock teams and drive decisions to keep releases on schedule.

Cross-Platform Technical Leadership

• Lead the interface contract between IVI and camera firmware, including distributed state-synchronization protocols and UDS-based diagnostics and firmware update flows.
• Guide the architecture for the video streaming pipeline: live streaming to the IVI screen, H.264/H.265 encoding, ISP configuration, resolution/frame-rate tuning, and latency optimization.
• Guide the integration of machine-learning and computer-vision capabilities, including object detection, classification, tracking, and other camera-based perception use cases.
• Work with the platform team to improve and ensure robust communications across vehicle network interfaces, including automotive Ethernet.

Quality, Verification & Validation

• Partner with the V&V team, quality, and systems teams to define test strategies, integration plans, and acceptance criteria for camera features.
• Coordinate software integration, bench testing, vehicle-level validation, defect triage, and root-cause analysis across IVI and embedded firmware.
• Champion quality across CI pipelines, test frameworks, and code-quality gates, including static analysis and coverage thresholds.

Security & Manufacturing Readiness

• Partner with security teams on secure boot, TLS, certificate-based authentication, and secure provisioning / key injection.
• Drive manufacturing readiness, including OTA firmware distribution, version management, artifact release pipelines, and production flashing workflows.

Stakeholder Communication

• Serve as the single point of accountability for camera software status to product, program, and executive stakeholders.
• Provide regular, structured updates to Program and Engineering leadership, communicating progress, risks, dependencies, quality metrics, validation status, and release readiness to senior leadership and other key stakeholders.

You’ll have

• 7–10 years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years leading or managing engineering teams that delivered shipped products.
• Familiarity with camera/video software, including capture pipelines, ISP, streaming, H.264/H.265 codecs, and latency-sensitive real-time systems
• Understanding machine-learning inference and computer-vision workflows for camera applications, including model integration, performance optimization, and deployment on resource-constrained platforms. Demonstrated experience owning features end-to-end across an application layer and an embedded/firmware layer.
• Solid understanding of Linux operating system fundamentals, system-level programming, and driver integration.
• Deep expertise on at least one side of the stack, with working fluency on the other:
• IVI: Kotlin/Java, AAOS (IVI Automotive OS), Jetpack Compose, JNI.
• Embedded / OS: C/C++, Linux, RTOS (Zephyr preferred), bootloaders, and device drivers.
• Experience with device-to-device / vehicle communication protocols (e.g., UDS, state-sync frameworks, automotive Ethernet).
• Proven track record with CI/CD, automated testing, and code-quality gates.
• Experience working with V&V, QA, systems engineering, and other cross-functional teams to deliver production software.
• Excellent cross-functional communication and program management skills.

Even better, you may have

• Experience in automotive / in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) software.
• Hands-on background with ARM Cortex-M based SoCs and vision/camera microcontrollers
• Experience shipping OTA firmware updates and managing multi-target build matrices across hardware variants.
• Familiarity with distributed state synchronization and VHAL integration.

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 a leadership level 6 and ranges from $150,200-$283,500. 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.

Visa sponsorship is 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

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