Director, Strategy & Operations

Ford Motor Company; Dearborn (MI); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Parental leave

Vehicle discount program

Tuition assistance

Paid time off & holidays

Job summary

Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, MI seeks a Director, Strategy & Operations for the Software Factory. You will define how software is built, deployed, and maintained at scale, bridging engineering, product, and business stakeholders to translate technical operations into business value.

Lead governance, analytics, and a small team, establish release rhythms, drive ROI-focused investments, and improve delivery health across the software value stream.

Qualifications

• Experience leading operational excellence in high-stakes delivery or production environments.
• Strong understanding of software delivery operations, release management, DevOps practices, and CI/CD transformation.
• Ability to build business cases linking engineering investments to financial outcomes like productivity and cost efficiency.
• Experience managing vendor, SaaS, cloud, or managed service relationships with SLAs.
• Strong change management to move organizations from manual to automated operating models.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, product, finance, procurement, and exec leadership.
• Strong analytical skills with operational metrics and dashboards to drive performance.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and modern software delivery environments.
• Automotive industry experience is helpful but not required; learning on the job.

Responsibilities

• Establish and govern a predictable software release operating model, including go/no-go processes and release calendars.
• Lead release preparation, deployment readiness, and warranty/hyper-care support with automation.
• Define operational standards for reliability, security, scalability, and delivery consistency.
• Partner with engineering leaders and product managers to align capacity, roadmap timing, and commitments.
• Translate technical issues and risks into clear business impacts for executives.
• Develop investment strategies for infrastructure, tooling, and vendor partnerships with ROI cases.
• Monitor and improve software factory performance via deployment health, uptime, and cost efficiency.
• Identify bottlenecks and drive automation across the delivery lifecycle.
• Lead operational reviews using data to assess system health and budget adherence.
• Build and scale a high-performing team for release operations, governance, and analytics.

Skills

Operational excellence

DevOps & CI/CD

Cross-functional leadership

Vendor management

Cloud infrastructure

Analytical skills

Job description

In this position...

The Director, Strategy & Operations will act as a business strategist for the Software Factory, defining how software is built, deployed, and maintained at scale. This leader bridges engineering, product, and business stakeholders to ensure technical operations translate into business value. The position combines strategic planning, operational governance, and analytics accountability—establishing release rhythms, guiding investment decisions, improving delivery health, and identifying bottlenecks across the software value stream. Over time, the role is expected to build and lead a small team spanning release management, operations, and analytics.

What you'll do...

• Establish and govern a predictable software release operating model, including go/no-go processes, release calendars, and delivery rituals.

• Lead release preparation, deployment readiness activities, and early warranty/hyper-care support while driving long-term automation of these workflows.

• Define operational standards for reliability, security, scalability, and delivery consistency across engineering teams.

• Partner with engineering leaders and product managers to align delivery capacity, roadmap timing, and market commitments.

• Translate technical issues, delivery risks, and environment instability into clear business impacts for executive stakeholders.

• Develop investment strategies for infrastructure, tooling, and vendor partnerships, including buy-versus-build decisions and ROI cases.

• Monitor and improve software factory performance through metrics such as deployment health, uptime, cost efficiency, and DORA performance.

• Identify bottlenecks and sources of manual toil across the delivery lifecycle, then drive process improvement and automation.

• Lead operational reviews using data to assess system health, release performance, and budget adherence.

• Build and scale a high-performing team to support release operations, operational governance, and analytics.

You'll have...

• Experience leading operational excellence in a high-stakes delivery or production environment, ideally using Lean, Six Sigma, or similar frameworks.

• Strong understanding of software delivery operations, release management, DevOps practices, and CI/CD transformation.

• Demonstrated ability to build business cases and connect engineering investments to financial outcomes such as productivity, speed, and cost efficiency.

• Experience managing vendor, SaaS, cloud, or managed service relationships, including performance accountability through SLAs.

• Strong change management capability, with the ability to move organizations from manual, hero-based processes to standardized, automated operating models.

• Ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, product, finance, procurement, and executive leadership.

• Strong analytical skills with experience using operational metrics and dashboards to drive performance improvement.

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, and modern software delivery environments.

• Automotive industry experience is helpful but not required; candidates can learn domain-specific complexities such as OTA, telematics, and hardware/software integration on the job.

• Prior experience building or scaling teams in release operations, platform operations, or engineering business operations is preferred.

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 a leadership level 4.

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/LL4Benefits

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.

This position is hybrid (onsite four days per week) for candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location or remote for non-local candidates.