Sr Director, Developer Experience and Platform Engineering

In this position...

This role requires a leader who brings deep hands-on engineering experience, having personally designed, built, and operated complex systems earlier in their career, and who now applies that experience to platform strategy, architectural decision-making, and technical leadership at enterprise scale. 

The Senior Director, Developer Experience and Platform Engineering brings technical credibility, architectural judgment, and engineering leadership to ensure Developer Experience is a first-class engineering discipline embedded across the software lifecycle. The role emphasizes hands-on engineering experience, platform ownership, and technical decision-making, while also requiring strong leadership, collaboration, and strategic alignment across the organization. 

What you'll do...
Engineering, Platform & Code Ownership 

Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for Developer Experience platforms, including: 

Developer portals and internal platform products 

CI/CD pipelines and code delivery systems 

Container-based developer and runtime environments, including orchestration and lifecycle management 

API platforms, service templates, and established “golden paths” 

Observability, reliability, and operational tooling 

Lead DevX platforms as products, with: 

Clear ownership and accountability 

Roadmaps informed by real developer needs 

Defined reliability, security, and service expectations 

Act as a hands-on technical leader: 

Review architecture, designs, and system patterns 

Apply practical engineering judgment to platform and tooling decisions 

Make informed trade-offs across scalability, security, reliability, and usability

Programming Languages, Core Repositories & Code Delivery:

Provide deep technical leadership across polyglot engineering environments, spanning modern backend, frontend, mobile, data, and distributed systems technologies 

Apply strong understanding of multiple programming paradigms (object-oriented, functional, reactive, event-driven) to ensure DevX initiatives align with how engineers actually write and maintain code

Be accountable for core repository strategy and health, including: 

Code organization and modularization 

Dependency, version, and release management 

Shared libraries, frameworks, and reuse patterns 

Secure, compliant contribution and governance models

Influence and standardize code delivery practices across the organization, enabling: 

Consistent, automated, and high-quality build and release workflows 

Predictable delivery across both legacy and modern codebases 

Clear ownership and lifecycle management of shared repositories

Strategy Grounded in Engineering Reality 

Define and own a multi-year Developer Experience strategy aligned with: 

Automotive and industrial software delivery constraints 

Safety, security, and regulatory requirements 

Operating at scale across global regions, time zones, and organizational boundaries 

A broad and evolving technology landscape, spanning legacy systems through modern and emerging (“bleeding-edge”) platforms 

Translate strategy into concrete engineering roadmaps and platform designs that can be executed incrementally and sustainably 

Ensure DevX initiatives reflect real developer workflows, operational constraints, and production realities 

Balance standardization and autonomy through well-designed paved paths that support consistency while enabling innovation

Metrics, Measurement & Continuous Improvement 

Define, own, and continuously evolve Developer Experience KPIs that measure productivity, reliability, code quality, delivery performance, and developer sentiment

Establish a DevX measurement framework that combines: 

Quantitative engineering metrics (e.g., lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, recovery time) 

Platform usage, adoption, and reliability signals 

Regular developer surveys and qualitative feedback mechanisms to identify friction and unmet needs 

Use DevX KPIs and survey insights to: 

Inform platform, tooling, and investment decisions 

Identify systemic bottlenecks across the software lifecycle 

Measure the effectiveness and impact of DevX initiatives over time 

Ensure metrics are used for continuous improvement, not individual performance management 

Provide clear executive-level visibility into Developer Experience health and trends

AI-Enabled Engineering & Code Quality

Lead the responsible application of AI across the software development lifecycle, integrating AI-assisted capabilities such as: 

Code authoring, refactoring, and modernization assistance 

Automated code review and static analysis augmentation 

Test generation, defect detection, and coverage improvement 

Developer feedback and productivity tooling 

Ensure AI-enabled solutions: 

Improve code quality, maintainability, and developer experience 

Are integrated into existing developer workflows and CI/CD pipelines 

Meet enterprise standards for security, compliance, intellectual property protection, and ethical use 

Cross-Functional Technical & Delivery Leadership

Partner closely with: 

Product, Platform, and PDOs to align DevX platforms and tooling with delivery priorities, roadmaps, and outcomes 

Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Engineering 

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) 

Cybersecurity and Compliance teams 

Enterprise Architecture and Product Engineering

Work with PDOs to ensure Developer Experience investments: 

Support predictable delivery and execution at scale 

Reduce friction across planning, build, test, and release phases 

Align technical capabilities with business and portfolio priorities 

Serve as a technical peer and trusted advisor to senior engineering, delivery, and infrastructure leaders 

Influence architecture, tooling, and delivery direction through technical credibility and delivery experience 

Operational Excellence & Reliability Integration

Embed Developer Experience into: 

Incident management and postmortems 

Reliability and SRE practices 

Secure software supply chain initiatives 

Change and release management 

Ensure DevX platforms and tooling are: 

Secure and resilient by default 

Observable and operated with production rigor 

Drive a culture of automation, self-service, and continuous engineering improvement 

How success is achieved...

Applying prior hands-on engineering experience to guide platform strategy and architectural decisions 

Maintaining strong technical fluency across languages, tooling, and system design 

Building developer platforms and workflows engineers trust and adopt 

Using data, KPIs, and developer feedback to guide continuous improvement 

Partnering effectively across engineering, PDOs, cloud, reliability, and security organizations 

You'll have...
Engineering & Technical Expertise

15+ years of experience in software engineering, including: 

Significant hands-on development, system design, and production operations experience 

Direct involvement in building and operating complex, distributed systems 

Demonstrated ability to apply prior engineering experience to platform architecture, code delivery, and technical strategy

Deep expertise in: 

Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including production operations at scale 

Container-based platforms and orchestration technologies 

CI/CD systems, developer tooling, and code delivery pipelines 

Polyglot software architectures and modern application frameworks 

Observability, reliability, and SRE practices

Strong working knowledge of: 

Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) 

Multi-cloud and hybrid architecture trade-offs 

Solid understanding of: 

Secure software supply chains 

Compliance and regulatory requirements common in automotive environments

Leadership Profile 

An engineering-first leader who has grown from hands-on engineer to senior technical leader 

Leads through technical depth, architectural judgment, and delivery experience

Comfortable operating at: 

Executive-level strategy discussions 

Deep technical and architectural detail 

Experienced in leading platform or infrastructure engineering organizations building real, production systems 

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 of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up childcare 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 leadership level 4.

For more information on salary and benefits, click here:  https://fordcareers.co/LL4Benefits
 
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.
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