Platform Engineering Manager
Ford · Dearborn, MI
- Level
- Manager
- Team
- Manufacturing
- Base pay
- $133k–$251k
- Experience asked
- 12+ years
- Industry
- Automotive
- Posted
- 16 days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A management manufacturing role at Ford (automotive) in Dearborn, MI. Do you believe a secure, reliable developer platform can help teams deliver better products, faster?
- They ask for
- 12+ years
- Tools it names
- Automation, CATIA / NX
- Base pay
- $133k–$251k
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026
Manufacturing Engineer roles in Michigan: typical posted base $81k–$166k. This one lists $133k–$251k.
Median of the low and high ends of 28 live postings that list pay, out of 83 manufacturing engineer openings in Michigan, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
Michigan plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 82 other live manufacturing postings in Michigan.
- Base pay
- About 60% above similar roles
- Experience asked
- More than usual (12+ vs 5+)
Typical $78k–$162k, from 27 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- New product launch 61%
- Tooling 47%
- Lean 40%
- FMEA 33%
- Root cause 30%
- Team leadership 29%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Manufacturing team at Ford
We found 11 people at this company and state: 8 in this kind of role, 3 leaders. Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. See them ↓
- 2
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
Write to Rob → (free) - 3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- Is the work mostly new product launches or sustaining existing lines?
- How much time do you spend on the floor versus at a desk?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
- 5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
This plant: Ford in Dearborn
30 other open roles at this site · 11 people we found in manufacturing roles at Ford.
- IVI & Audio Hardware Quality Supervisor · Quality · Supervisor
- Engineering Specialist- Controls · Controls
- Manufacturing Engineer-Package Attach/ Reflow Soldering · Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Engineer · Manufacturing
- Launch Manufacturing Engineer · Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Engineer- General Assembly · Manufacturing
Full description from FordAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
At Ford, 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 part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to help change the way the world moves?
Do you believe a secure, reliable developer platform can help teams deliver better products, faster? Ford’s Marketing and Sales Technology organization depends on scalable cloud infrastructure, automated delivery, and strong platform engineering to support its eCommerce foundation. That’s where this role makes an impact.
We are seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Manager to lead the delivery and ongoing evolution of Ford’s Internal Developer Platform (IDP). You will guide the development of self-service capabilities for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration, helping product teams improve their development experience and deliver software securely and efficiently.
This role combines platform engineering and cloud expertise with people leadership, delivery accountability, and cross-functional collaboration. You will partner with product teams, platform architects, Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations, security, SRE, and release-management teams to translate business needs into technical capabilities and measurable platform outcomes.
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.
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
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 e