Platform Engineering Manager

Platform Engineering Manager

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 AI agents used for platform engineering service automation.
• Use platform, delivery, reliability, and cost insights to identify improvements and inform platform priorities.
• Promote cloud-native development and platform practices across Ford’s Marketing and Sales Technology organization.

We recognize that no one person will embody every quality or skill listed below. If you are passionate about cloud platforms, developer experience, and leading teams that deliver secure and reliable platform services, we encourage you to apply.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline—or equivalent relevant experience.
• Preferred degree: Bachelor of Engineering.

Experience

• 12+ years of relevant professional experience.

• Experience developing and maintaining self-service platform products for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, and observability.

• Experience leading platform engineering delivery, cloud infrastructure initiatives, or DevSecOps adoption.

• Experience managing or operating services on GCP and supporting cloud-native application development.

• Experience with team leadership, mentoring, technical delivery, and coordinating across multiple stakeholder groups.

• Experience working with product teams to understand requirements and improve developer productivity and experience.

• Experience driving high availability, disaster recovery, auto-scaling, and multi-region platform practices.

• Experience partnering with cloud, security, SRE, and release-management teams.

• Strong communication, interpersonal, facilitation, and problem-solving skills, including the ability to work effectively with executive leadership and global teams.

• Required Technical Experience

• Experience developing and maintaining self-service platform products for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, and observability.

• Strong experience with GCP services, including Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Operations suite, Anthos, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Scheduler, Bigtable, AlloyDB, and other managed services.

• Experience managing cloud infrastructure provisioning, including VPCs, subnets, gateways, security groups, managed services, and Kubernetes clusters.

• Expertise with Infrastructure as Code and automation using Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.

• Experience with CI/CD tools such as Tekton, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins.

• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, GKE, and Red Hat OpenShift.

• Knowledge of DevSecOps and platform security tools, including SonarQube, Cycode, 42Crunch, Astra, JFrog Xray, container vulnerability scanning, and FOSSA.

• Experience with cloud-native architectures, including microservices, micro frontends, event-driven systems, APIs, Domain-Driven Design, serverless, and containerized applications.

• Working knowledge of microservices frameworks such as Spring Boot or Micronaut.

• Experience building scalable, reliable, and available cloud-native or transactional systems.