Platform Engineering Manager

Lincoln Motor Company; Dearborn (MI); Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Ford is seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Manager to lead the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) strategy, roadmap, and delivery. You will coordinate with platform architects, product teams, and IT operations to translate business needs into scalable cloud-native capabilities and secure, reliable platform services.

You will mentor a global team, drive best practices in DevSecOps, SRE, and observability, and collaborate with security and release-management teams to improve Developer

Responsibilities

• Lead the delivery and evolution of Ford’s Internal Developer Platform (IDP).
• Guide CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration.
• Partner with product teams, platform architects, IT operations, security, SRE, and release management.

Job 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. At Ford, we’re all part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to help change the way the world moves?

Do you believe a secure, reliable developer platform can help teams deliver better products, faster? Ford’s Marketing and Sales Technology organization depends on scalable cloud infrastructure, automated delivery, and strong platform engineering to support its eCommerce foundation. That’s where this role makes an impact.

We are seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Manager to lead the delivery and ongoing evolution of Ford’s Internal Developer Platform (IDP). You will guide the development of self‑service capabilities for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration, helping product teams improve their development experience and deliver software securely and efficiently. This role combines platform engineering and cloud expertise with people leadership, delivery accountability, and cross‑functional collaboration. You will partner with product teams, platform architects, Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations, security, SRE, and release‑management teams to translate business needs into technical capabilities and measurable platform outcomes.

Platform Strategy, Roadmap & Delivery

• Own and manage the Internal Developer Platform, including self-service services for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration.
• Lead delivery and evolution of next-generation platform capabilities in partnership with platform architects and technical teams.
• Research existing and emerging technologies and recommend solutions that support future infrastructure and cloud-native workloads.
• Evaluate tools and technologies for developing and deploying products on Ford’s eCommerce foundation layer.
• Partner with product teams to understand developer challenges and prioritize platform capabilities that improve Developer Experience.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business needs into technical and non-functional specifications.
• Work with senior leaders across Enterprise Architecture and IT Operations to deliver measurable improvements to the platform.

Team Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness

• Lead, coach, and develop platform engineering team members, setting clear priorities, expectations, and accountability for delivery.
• Mentor engineers to strengthen their technical capabilities and support their professional growth.
• Build a collaborative, high-performing team focused on secure, reliable, and customer-centered platform services.
• Foster knowledge sharing, continuous improvement, and disciplined execution across the platform engineering organization.
• Work effectively with global teams in remote and virtual environments.
• Facilitate technical discussions across diverse perspectives and help teams reach decisions or recommendations.
• Communicate effectively with executive leaders and stakeholders inside and outside the technology organization.
• Lead teams through change and build trusted partnerships across cloud, security, SRE, release management, and software engineering.

Cloud Platform Engineering & DevSecOps

• Design, develop, and maintain secure, scalable cloud infrastructure platforms using modern DevSecOps and platform engineering practices.
• Manage platform services using Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Operations suite, Anthos, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Scheduler, Bigtable, AlloyDB, and other managed services.
• Guide provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, gateways, security groups, managed services, Kubernetes clusters, GKE, and Red Hat OpenShift.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code reviews and the automation and deployment of cloud infrastructure.
• Guide automation using tools such as Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.
• Manage and improve CI/CD capabilities using tools such as Tekton, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins.
• Establish and implement best practices for code quality, security, performance, and scalability using tools such as SonarQube, Cycode, 42Crunch, Astra, JFrog Xray, build‑time container vulnerability scanning, and FOSSA.
• Build automation for repeatable DevSecOps tasks and connect CI/CD with infrastructure services to improve software engineering productivity.

Reliability, Security & Observability

• Lead adoption of DevSecOps, observability, and platform engineering practices across the organization.
• Oversee patch management and use monitoring and APM tools such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK to support platform health and alerting.
• Guide implementation and management of auto‑scaling, high availability, disaster recovery, and multi‑region Active/Active and Active/Passive architectures.
• Apply cloud‑native practices to support scalable, reliable, and available platform services.
• Partner with technical teams to address security, performance, and operational concerns across the platform.
• Manage Cloud FinOps practices to monitor and optimize cloud infrastructure consumption costs.

Transformation, Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Advance Shift Left practices for quality, security, and open‑source software, alongside Shift Right platform engineering practices.
• Support adoption of AI‑enabled automation and AIOps to improve platform operations and Developer Experience.
• Guide the deployment, evaluation, and monitoring of