Software and AI Engineer

Ford; United States; Remote; USD 68,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

Parental leave

Tuition assistance

Vehicle discount for employees

Job summary

Ford Motor Credit Company seeks an experienced backend engineer to help build and operate AI-enabled, production-grade services across a multi-tier stack including COBOL/DB2/CICS mainframe, Java/Spring, and Google Cloud Run microservices. You will own the MCP tooling layer, enable hybrid retrieval, and ensure auditability and provenance for critically important loan originations workflows.

The role emphasizes building deterministic services, instrumenting with Splunk observability, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years building and operating production-grade backend systems as a hands-on engineer.
• 5+ years in Python and Java (Kotlin, TypeScript a plus).
• At least 1 year of experience in shipping AI-enabled applications in production — agent frameworks, retrieval systems, or LLM-backed services.
• Demonstrated experience with agent orchestration frameworks — Google ADK, LangGraph, LangChain, or comparable.
• Practical experience implementing MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool integrations, agent communication patterns, and AI observability.
• Working experience with vector search and hybrid retrieval, and with knowledge graphs or GraphRAG.
• Strong backend fundamentals: Spring Boot, relational databases (PostgreSQL, DB2, or similar) including query and schema design, REST/OpenAPI, TDD, modern CI/CD.
• Production experience on Google Cloud Platform (Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery) or an equivalent cloud.
• Comfort operating in complex, multi-tier, legacy-integrated environments where change control and auditability matter.

Responsibilities

• Read the whole stack, then change it. Diagnose production issues across the mainframe (COBOL, DB2, CICS), the Java/Spring services tier, and Cloud Run microservices.
• Ship the fix on the money-path and the corresponding improvement to agent tooling and knowledge substrate in the same change set.
• Design and operate the MCP tools layer.
• Build least-privilege, per-call-audited MCP servers over DB2, Splunk, and GCP.
• Provenance, PII handling.
• Build production multi-agent workflows on Google ADK— SequentialAgent and LoopAgent compositions, creating and managing Agent workflows, including escalation-containment patterns — for Splunk → DB2 → GCP error triage, ADR authoring, and originations debugging.
• Own the knowledge graph and retrieval work end-to-end.
• Model the loan originations ontology (VIN, dealer, offer, program eligibility, environment topology). Implement hybrid vector + graph retrieval.
• Every RAG-produced answer must be defensible under audit.
• Ship deterministic backend services in Java/Kotlin + Spring Boot on GCP— the audit envelope, provenance store, and human-in-the-loop review surfaces where non-determinism is unacceptable.
• Author ADRs in ADR-driven-development, OKF business-logic documents, skill files, and Splunk saved-search catalogs.
• Pair with teammates on the hard debugging sessions. The write-up is part of "done."
• Track mean time from "agent cannot handle this" to "agent handles this autonomously," and publish the trend monthly.
• Create evaluations and an evaluation runner for all AI tools and agents built by you and the team.
• Publish, monthly, the change types you've made cheaper — mean time from "agent doesn't know this" to "agent handles it autonomously."
• Automate test-case generation, evaluation, and grading for both brownfield and greenfield applications, ensuring coverage, repeatability, and measurable quality improvements.

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field

Tools

Spring Boot

Python

Java

Kotlin

TypeScript

Job description

We made history and now we work to transform the future – for our customers, our communities and our families. You'll see your work on the road every day, helping people move freely and pursue their dreams. At Ford, you can build more than vehicles. Come build what matters.

The Ford Motor Credit Company team helps put people behind the wheels of great Ford and Lincoln vehicles. By partnering with dealerships, we provide financing, personalized service and professional expertise to thousands of dealers and millions of customers in over one hundred countries around the world.

In this position

Ford Motor Credit Company's Pinnacle Loan Originations platform underwrites and funds a significant share of the vehicles Ford sells worldwide. It is a mission-critical, multi-tier system: a mainframe core (COBOL, DB2, CICS) that executes the money-path decisioning, a Java/Spring services tier that orchestrates business workflows, GCP Cloud Run microservices at the digital edge, and Splunk-driven observability across the estate.

We are building an AI enablement layer on top of this platform — a set of production capabilities that make Pinnacle faster to operate, easier to debug, and more discoverable to the engineers and analysts who depend on it.

Responsibilities

Read the whole stack, then change it.Diagnose production issues across the mainframe (COBOL, DB2, CICS), the Java/Spring services tier, and Cloud Run microservices. Ship the fix on the money-pathandthe corresponding improvement to agent tooling and knowledge substrate in the same change set.

Design and operate the MCP tools layer.Build least-privilege, per-call-audited MCP servers over DB2, Splunk, and GCP. Provenance, PII handling.

Build production multi-agent workflows on Google ADK— SequentialAgent and LoopAgent compositions, creating and managing Agent workflows, including escalation-containment patterns — for Splunk → DB2 → GCP error triage, ADR authoring, and originations debugging.

Own the knowledge graph and retrieval work end-to-end.Model the loan originations ontology (VIN, dealer, offer, program eligibility, environment topology). Implement hybrid vector + graph retrieval. Every RAG-produced answer must be defensible under audit.

Ship deterministic backend services in Java/Kotlin + Spring Boot on GCP— the audit envelope, provenance store, and human-in-the-loop review surfaces where non-determinism is unacceptable.

Author ADRs in ADR-driven-development, OKF business-logic documents, skill files, and Splunk saved-search catalogs. Pair with teammates on the hard debugging sessions. The write-up is part of "done."

Track mean time from "agent cannot handle this" to "agent handles this autonomously," and publish the trend monthly.

Create evaluations and an evaluation runner for all AI tools and agents built by you and the team.

Publish, monthly, the change types you've made cheaper — mean time from "agent doesn't know this" to "agent handles it autonomously."

Automate test-case generation, evaluation, and grading for both brownfield and greenfield applications, ensuring coverage, repeatability, and measurable quality improvements.

Qualifications

You'll have...

Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.

7+ yearsbuilding and operating production-grade backend systems as a hands-on engineer.

5+ yearsin Python and Java (Kotlin, TypeScript a plus).

Atleast 1 year of experience inshipping AI-enabled applications in production — agent frameworks, retrieval systems, or LLM-backed services.

Demonstrated experience with agent orchestration frameworks —Google ADK, LangGraph, LangChain, or comparable.

Practical experience implementingMCP (Model Context Protocol)tool integrations, agent communication patterns, and AI observability.

Working experience withvector search and hybrid retrieval, and with knowledge graphs or GraphRAG.

Strong backend fundamentals: Spring Boot, relational databases (PostgreSQL, DB2, or similar) including query and schema design, REST/OpenAPI, TDD, modern CI/CD.

Production experience onGoogle Cloud Platform(Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery) or an equivalent cloud.

Comfort operating in complex, multi-tier, legacy-integrated environments where change control and auditability matter.

Even Better you'll have...

Semantic technologies, ontology engineering, or graph databases (Neo4j, Neptune, or similar).

Experience integrating with mainframe systems (COBOL, DB2 for z/OS, CICS) or comparable long-lived transactional cores.

Splunk SPL proficiency, including saved-search and dashboard authoring on large indexes.

Event-driven architectures (Pub/Sub, Kafka); containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).

Benefits

• 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 5 and ranges from $68,300-$114,800.

This position is a salary grade 6 and ranges from $85,400-$143,200.

This position is a salary grade 7 and ranges from $99,600-$166,600.

This position is a salary grade 8 and ranges from $115,000-$192,900.

For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/GSR

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.