Principal Software Engineer

As a Principal Software Engineer within the Global Industrial System Analytics organization, you will be a hands-on technical leader delivering working software. You will be responsible for design, development, and optimization of complex solutions for the Industrial System. You will solve complex, large-scale software engineering problems and build highly available, performant, and cost-effective solutions that power Ford's transformation of the Industrial System into a data-first, Analytics and AI-enabled organization.

While not a people management role, you will actively contribute to hiring, onboarding, and mentoring top-tier engineering talent and act as a technical bar-raiser across the organization. This is an opportunity to leave your technical mark on a large team, influence team direction without management overhead, and help shape a high-performance engineering culture focused on secure, scalable, reliable and efficient software.

Responsibilities

What you'll do...

Technical Execution & Hands-On Delivery

• Lead the design and development of critical ISA platform features, complex application implementation, and write and drive reusable components across ISA
• Write production-grade code, perform system integration, and contribute directly to codebases to unblock teams and raise the engineering bar
• Drive performance tuning, reliability engineering, and capacity planning

Engineering Leadership & Mentorship

• Lead by example in the areas of CI/CD, DevSecOps, infrastructure as code, and automated testing 
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, design sessions, and informal technical leadership

Innovation & Proof-of-Concepts

• Lead experimentation and prototyping efforts for emerging technologies and new capabilities and efficiencies (example – appropriate use of LLM for code generation)
• Translate non-functional requirements (e.g., security, scalability, compatibility, reliability) into actionable solutions
• Validate new technologies and patterns for scalability and performance prior to adoption with reference implementation

Industrial System Architecture & Engineering

• Design and develop core ISA platform components across the Industrial system, supporting integration with the enterprise data platform and IT source systems
• Leverage GCP-native services (Cloud Run, Cloud Build, Pub/Sub, IAM, Secret Manager, etc.) to enhance security and automation
• Design and promote modular code structures, service boundaries, test-driven development and decoupled architecture patterns
• Establish and maintain high standards for operations excellence across applications, driving the right technologies for the right service level agreements
• Ensure application architecture is aligned with Enterprise architecture

Technical Debt Management & Platform Maturity

• Identify and address technical debt aligned with Enterprise and GDIA technology transitions, balancing delivery with application health and maintainability
• Prioritize and drive modernization efforts that unlock developer productivity and efficiency

Cross-Functional Collagboration

• Work closely with architects (e.g. Enterprise architects, Data platform architects), data platform principal engineers, AI Platform engineers, product managers, data scientists, security teams, and business stakeholders to ensure alignment with organizational goals
• Translate complex technical concepts into actionable, well-communicated engineering plans

You'll have...

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience. 
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, including deep hands-on experience building and operating large-scale systems.  Other skills to include:
  • Expertise in one or more programming languages, Python or Java preferred, on large scale platforms
  • Knowledge of DevSecOps Tools: GitHub Actions, GCP Cloud Build or Tekton, Terraform, SonarQube, etc.
  • Experience with Cloud Architecture (preferably GCP): Modular Microservices, REST APIs and Serverless platforms like Cloud Run and Cloud Functions
• 5+ years of experience mentoring engineers and leading cross-team technical initiatives

Even better, you may have...

• Master's degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering or related field
• GCP Professional Certifications (e.g. Professional Cloud Developer, Cloud Architect)
• Thought leadership through open-source contributions, blogs, or conference talks
• Deep expertise in multiple programming languages and full-stack development

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-up 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.