Manager, Infrastructure & Platform Engineering, Ford Energy

Ford; Glendale (KY); On-site; USD 116,000 - 218,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Family care days & parental leave

Adoption & surrogacy reimbursement

Vehicle discount program

Tuition assistance

Employee resource groups

Community service PTO

Paid holidays & extra vacation options

Job summary

Ford is seeking a Manager of On-Premises Infrastructure & Platform Engineering to architect and operate the compute platforms powering a new Battery Energy Storage System manufacturing facility. You will lead a plant-scale data center, edge clusters, and bare-metal containers on the factory floor while maintaining links to enterprise cloud environments.

You will oversee design, deployment, and operations for OpenShift, Kubernetes, automation via Ansible and Python, and a modern observability

Qualifications

• 8+ years Linux system administration and engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, Ansible, and Python.
• Leadership or technical lead experience in high-availability environments.
• Experience sizing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise server hardware, hypervisors, and SAN/NAS.
• Experience building observability pipelines with OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, or Prometheus.
• Automation-first mindset with Ansible playbooks and scripting.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and lifecycle management for plant servers and edge compute clusters.
• Architect, deploy, and maintain OpenShift and Kubernetes for manufacturing workloads.
• Drive Infrastructure as Code using Ansible and Python to automate provisioning and bare-metal deployments.
• Deploy end-to-end monitoring for 24/7 visibility into Linux systems, hosts, and containers.
• Architect scalable local storage with disaster recovery frameworks.
• Lead infrastructure deployment during plant commissioning and go-live.
• Collaborate with vendors to specify and procure server hardware and storage.

Skills

Linux systems

Platform orchestration

Reliability engineering

Observability pipelines

Automation mindset

OpenShift

Kubernetes

Ansible

Python

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Datadog

Splunk

Prometheus

Tools

OpenShift

Kubernetes

Ansible

Python

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Datadog

Splunk

Prometheus

Job description

As the Manager of On-Premises Infrastructure & Hosting, you will be the primary architect and operator of the compute platforms that power our new Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) manufacturing facility. Reporting to the Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, you will lead the 'engine room' of the facility - building, running, and maintaining high-performance local data centers, edge compute platforms, and bare-metal container environments on the factory floor, while maintaining lightweight interfaces to enterprise cloud environments.

On-Premises Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• Local Data Center & Edge: Lead the physical and virtual design, rack layouts, power/cooling coordination, and lifecycle management for plant server rooms and low-latency edge compute clusters.
• Container & Platform Orchestration: Architect, deploy, and maintain enterprise Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes platforms to run real-time manufacturing and shop-floor workloads.
• Infrastructure Automation: Drive 'Infrastructure as Code' principles across all local servers using Ansible and Python scripts to automate provisioning, configuration, and bare-metal deployments.

Operational Reliability, Observability & Security

• Systems Monitoring & Observability: Deploy end-to-end monitoring and alerting suites to maintain 24/7 visibility into Linux systems, host health, and container metrics.
• Business Continuity & Storage: Architect scalable, low-latency enterprise storage arrays for high-volume manufacturing datasets, backed by robust local backup and disaster recovery frameworks.
• System Hardening: Enforce strict Linux system security, access controls, and network integration policies in close coordination with cross-functional IT and OT security teams.

Project Execution & Vendor Management

• Plant Construction & Go-Live: Serve as the technical lead for infrastructure deployment during plant commissioning, ensuring host environments are fully operational for initial production lines.
• Hardware Sourcing: Collaborate with hardware vendors to specify, evaluate, and procure server chassis, storage arrays, and high-availability rack solutions.

Required Qualifications

• Platform & OS Expertise: 8+ years of deep Linux system administration and engineering experience, with strong proficiency in Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, Ansible, and Python.
• Infrastructure Experience: 8+ years in core IT infrastructure, including direct leadership or technical lead responsibilities in high-availability environments.
• Hardware & Virtualization: Proven experience sizing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise server hardware, hypervisors, and storage area networks (SAN/NAS).
• Modern Observability Expertise: Hands-year experience architecting and scaling modern observability pipelines. Proficiency with current industry-standard tools for distributed tracing, metrics, and log aggregation (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Grafana ecosystem, Datadog, Splunk, or Prometheus).
• Automation-First Mindset: Demonstrated ability to build fully automated deployment pipelines using Ansible playbooks and custom scripting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Manufacturing & OT Context: Background supporting 24/7 continuous manufacturing or IToT environments where system uptime directly dictates production throughput.
• Hybrid Cloud Awareness: Basic exposure to public cloud integrations (e.g., GCP, AWS, MS-Azure) to manage enterprise hybrid interconnects without heavy cloud reliance.
• Full-Stack Troubleshooting: Pragmatic, hands-on approach to diagnosing hardware fault codes, kernel panics, and container orchestration failures.

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 leadership level 6 and ranges from $115,500-$218,100. 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 1-888-336-0660.

Company: As Ford establishes a wholly owned subsidiary focused on Battery Energy Storage Systems, this role will initially be employed by Ford and is expected to transition to the subsidiary within one year.