Director, Private Cloud Platform Engineering
Ford Motor Company, Helena, MT, United States
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 a part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to change the way the world moves?
Enterprise Technology plays a critical part in shaping the future of mobility. If you’re looking for the chance to leverage advanced technology to redefine the transportation landscape, enhance customer experience and improve people’s lives, this is the opportunity for you. Join us and challenge your IT expertise and analytical skills to help create vehicles that are as smart as you are.
In this position...
We are seeking an experienced and visionary Private Cloud Platform Engineering Director to lead the modernization and evolution of our internal cloud infrastructure. In this role, you will drive the strategic direction, architecture, and delivery of our Private Cloud Orchestration Platform, enabling both containerized and VM workloads across hybrid environments. You will champion Developer Experience as a first-class deliverable, ensuring our engineers can ship reliable software quickly through golden paths, service scaffolds, standardized CI/CD templates, preview environments, guardrails, and measurable time-to-first-deploy targets.
This role requires a leader who blends deep technical expertise in private and hybrid cloud technologies with strong organizational leadership, fostering a culture of innovation, automation, and reliability.
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
What you'll do... Strategic Leadership & Governance
Develop and execute the strategic roadmap for our private cloud and developer platform, aligning technology investments with business objectives.
Lead architecture forums, platform RFC processes, and cross-organizational guardrail discussions to ensure cohesive governance.
Engage stakeholders across engineering, infrastructure, and executive teams, communicating complex technical concepts in clear business terms.
Developer Experience & Enablement
Deliver Developer Experience (DevEx) as a measurable platform outcome, building
paved roads
for teams to onboard quickly and safely.
Provide
golden paths
for service creation, CI/CD, observability, and security through reusable templates and self-service tooling.
Establish and track
time-to-first-deploy
and
feedback-loop performance metrics
to continuously improve developer productivity.
Private Cloud & Hybrid Platform Engineering
Lead modernization of our
private cloud orchestration
capabilities with a focus on scalability, security, and interoperability.
Manage hybrid estates, bridging
VM and containerized workloads
across
OpenStack (Nova, Neutron, Cinder)
and
OpenShift Virtualization , ensuring compliance and SLA adherence.
Guide architectural decisions around
Autopilot vs. Standard GKE ,
Workload Identity ,
Shielded Nodes ,
Binary Authorization ,
autoscaling strategies , and
release channels .
GitOps, Policy-as-Code, and CI/CD Automation
Drive
GitOps
practices using
Argo CD or Flux , and integrate
Anthos Config Management/Fleet
where applicable.
Embed
policy-as-code
frameworks (e.g.,
OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, CUE/Rego ) into all deployment pipelines for compliance and standardization.
Standardize and scale
CI/CD pipelines
(Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent), supporting
progressive delivery
via
Argo Rollouts, Flagger , and
canary/blue-green deployment strategies .
Own IaC at scale using
Terraform ,
Helm , and
charts management, as well as Ansible
to ensure consistency and reproducibility.
Service Mesh & Networking
Champion
service mesh adoption
(Istio or equivalent: Linkerd/Consul etc) with a focus on
mTLS by default ,
traffic splitting ,
Gateway API , and
advanced traffic policies .
Oversee network design,
NetworkPolicies
(Calico/Cilium), and
VPC
configurations to meet performance and security objectives.
Observability & Reliability Engineering (SRE)
Strengthen observability practices, integrating
Dynatrace
with
OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana
for metrics, logs, and traces correlation.
Build
SLO dashboards
for both engineers and executives, enabling data-driven decision-making.
Lead the SRE charter, defining and owning
SLIs/SLOs ,
error budgets ,
incident response ,
postmortems ,
chaos testing , and
disaster recovery
(RTO/RPO).
Tie reliability goals directly to business KPIs and customer experience.
Security & Supply Chain Hardening
Implement
preventive security controls
across the platform: IAM/RBAC strategies,
Workload Identity Federation , and
secret management
(Vault/KMS).
Integrate
SBOM generation ,
SLSA provenance ,
image signing/verification (Binary Authorization) , and
policy enforcement
at deploy time.
Enforce compliance via
NetworkPolicies , runtime security checks, and continuous vulnerability management.
Leadership & Team Development
Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team (15–20+ engineers) focused on platform scalability, reliability, and innovation.
Foster a collaborative, learning‑oriented culture that values technical excellence, psychological safety, and outcome-driven engineering.
Manage budgets, vendor relationships, and multi-year platform roadmaps across business units.
You’ll have...
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
10+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, with a proven track record of leadership in managing private cloud infrastructure.
7+ years of technical experience including:
GKE, Anthos, OpenShift, OpenStack, and VMware.
Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Ansible, and proficiency in using Kubernetes-native tools like Helm.
Programming languages like Go, Cue, Rust, Python, Java, Node.js etc. Hands‑on experience with Terraform, Argo/Flux, OPA/Gatekeeper/Kyverno, and observability stacks (Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana).
3+ years of experience leading large teams(~15–20+ engineers) platform or SRE organizations. This should include team management skills including experience in building and leading diverse engineering teams.
4+ years of strategic, communication and problem‑solving experience to include:
Strategic Thinking:
Ability to develop and implement strategic plans that align with business objectives and drive technological innovation.
Communication Skills:
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical information to both technical, non-technical, and executive audiences. Ability to traverse multi-layer complex cross org structures, driving critical outcomes.
Problem‑solving Skills:
Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to make data‑driven decisions and manage risk effectively.
Even better, you may have...
Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field
Relevant certifications such as Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, Kubernetes Administrator, RedHat certification, network/security or similar.
You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply.
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 the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage
Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp‑up programs, subsidized back-upt childcare 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.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL5SP1 (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/fordcareers.co/LL5SP1__;!!N_LtwI-RPugbI9wg0dJn!DRMFgV6on-tIgqTXjaqDzEi0Oq8q08K6Si5iQfjCviJFUvP3rIAmZYx5kdGscpm1ozDuWoUMwEuJSPE$)
This position is leadership level 5.
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.
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Enterprise Technology plays a critical part in shaping the future of mobility. If you’re looking for the chance to leverage advanced technology to redefine the transportation landscape, enhance customer experience and improve people’s lives, this is the opportunity for you. Join us and challenge your IT expertise and analytical skills to help create vehicles that are as smart as you are.
In this position...
We are seeking an experienced and visionary Private Cloud Platform Engineering Director to lead the modernization and evolution of our internal cloud infrastructure. In this role, you will drive the strategic direction, architecture, and delivery of our Private Cloud Orchestration Platform, enabling both containerized and VM workloads across hybrid environments. You will champion Developer Experience as a first-class deliverable, ensuring our engineers can ship reliable software quickly through golden paths, service scaffolds, standardized CI/CD templates, preview environments, guardrails, and measurable time-to-first-deploy targets.
This role requires a leader who blends deep technical expertise in private and hybrid cloud technologies with strong organizational leadership, fostering a culture of innovation, automation, and reliability.
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
What you'll do... Strategic Leadership & Governance
Develop and execute the strategic roadmap for our private cloud and developer platform, aligning technology investments with business objectives.
Lead architecture forums, platform RFC processes, and cross-organizational guardrail discussions to ensure cohesive governance.
Engage stakeholders across engineering, infrastructure, and executive teams, communicating complex technical concepts in clear business terms.
Developer Experience & Enablement
Deliver Developer Experience (DevEx) as a measurable platform outcome, building
paved roads
for teams to onboard quickly and safely.
Provide
golden paths
for service creation, CI/CD, observability, and security through reusable templates and self-service tooling.
Establish and track
time-to-first-deploy
and
feedback-loop performance metrics
to continuously improve developer productivity.
Private Cloud & Hybrid Platform Engineering
Lead modernization of our
private cloud orchestration
capabilities with a focus on scalability, security, and interoperability.
Manage hybrid estates, bridging
VM and containerized workloads
across
OpenStack (Nova, Neutron, Cinder)
and
OpenShift Virtualization , ensuring compliance and SLA adherence.
Guide architectural decisions around
Autopilot vs. Standard GKE ,
Workload Identity ,
Shielded Nodes ,
Binary Authorization ,
autoscaling strategies , and
release channels .
GitOps, Policy-as-Code, and CI/CD Automation
Drive
GitOps
practices using
Argo CD or Flux , and integrate
Anthos Config Management/Fleet
where applicable.
Embed
policy-as-code
frameworks (e.g.,
OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, CUE/Rego ) into all deployment pipelines for compliance and standardization.
Standardize and scale
CI/CD pipelines
(Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent), supporting
progressive delivery
via
Argo Rollouts, Flagger , and
canary/blue-green deployment strategies .
Own IaC at scale using
Terraform ,
Helm , and
charts management, as well as Ansible
to ensure consistency and reproducibility.
Service Mesh & Networking
Champion
service mesh adoption
(Istio or equivalent: Linkerd/Consul etc) with a focus on
mTLS by default ,
traffic splitting ,
Gateway API , and
advanced traffic policies .
Oversee network design,
NetworkPolicies
(Calico/Cilium), and
VPC
configurations to meet performance and security objectives.
Observability & Reliability Engineering (SRE)
Strengthen observability practices, integrating
Dynatrace
with
OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana
for metrics, logs, and traces correlation.
Build
SLO dashboards
for both engineers and executives, enabling data-driven decision-making.
Lead the SRE charter, defining and owning
SLIs/SLOs ,
error budgets ,
incident response ,
postmortems ,
chaos testing , and
disaster recovery
(RTO/RPO).
Tie reliability goals directly to business KPIs and customer experience.
Security & Supply Chain Hardening
Implement
preventive security controls
across the platform: IAM/RBAC strategies,
Workload Identity Federation , and
secret management
(Vault/KMS).
Integrate
SBOM generation ,
SLSA provenance ,
image signing/verification (Binary Authorization) , and
policy enforcement
at deploy time.
Enforce compliance via
NetworkPolicies , runtime security checks, and continuous vulnerability management.
Leadership & Team Development
Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team (15–20+ engineers) focused on platform scalability, reliability, and innovation.
Foster a collaborative, learning‑oriented culture that values technical excellence, psychological safety, and outcome-driven engineering.
Manage budgets, vendor relationships, and multi-year platform roadmaps across business units.
You’ll have...
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
10+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, with a proven track record of leadership in managing private cloud infrastructure.
7+ years of technical experience including:
GKE, Anthos, OpenShift, OpenStack, and VMware.
Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Ansible, and proficiency in using Kubernetes-native tools like Helm.
Programming languages like Go, Cue, Rust, Python, Java, Node.js etc. Hands‑on experience with Terraform, Argo/Flux, OPA/Gatekeeper/Kyverno, and observability stacks (Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana).
3+ years of experience leading large teams(~15–20+ engineers) platform or SRE organizations. This should include team management skills including experience in building and leading diverse engineering teams.
4+ years of strategic, communication and problem‑solving experience to include:
Strategic Thinking:
Ability to develop and implement strategic plans that align with business objectives and drive technological innovation.
Communication Skills:
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical information to both technical, non-technical, and executive audiences. Ability to traverse multi-layer complex cross org structures, driving critical outcomes.
Problem‑solving Skills:
Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to make data‑driven decisions and manage risk effectively.
Even better, you may have...
Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field
Relevant certifications such as Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, Kubernetes Administrator, RedHat certification, network/security or similar.
You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply.
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 the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage
Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp‑up programs, subsidized back-upt childcare 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.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL5SP1 (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/fordcareers.co/LL5SP1__;!!N_LtwI-RPugbI9wg0dJn!DRMFgV6on-tIgqTXjaqDzEi0Oq8q08K6Si5iQfjCviJFUvP3rIAmZYx5kdGscpm1ozDuWoUMwEuJSPE$)
This position is leadership level 5.
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.
#J-18808-Ljbffr