Director, Digital Service Platforms

About the role

Service Engineering & Operations is seeking an experienced individual to lead the charge in transforming the performance, stability, and future-readiness of our expansive digital backbone — the foundation that empowers dealer service personnel with robust, efficient tools across every touchpoint: the service lane (Service Advisors), the service bay (Technicians), and claims submission. This leader will navigate significant complexity across systems and architectures, balancing rock-solid reliability with a relentless drive toward modernization and efficiency.

This role also serves as a critical strategic interface with our partners in FCSD Tech (IT), stewarding the allocated IT budget and ensuring that projects not only progress against aligned timelines and roadmaps, but actively accelerate delivery of prioritized business needs — driving forward-looking modernization efforts alongside essential system maintenance.

Responsibilities

• Technology Leadership & Innovation
  • Drive the strategic evolution of mission-critical technology systems powering Service Engineering and Operations—elevating performance, resilience, and capability beyond current baselines across PTS, FDRS, OWS, GTAC, GCAMP, and associated back-end platforms (GOASIS, SAVE, FDSP, etc.)
  • Champion next-generation system architecture and capability roadmaps that anticipate future business needs rather than simply sustaining existing operations
• Strategic Planning & Portfolio Leadership
  • Own the multi-year vision for IT-enabled business transformation, translating emerging needs into a forward-looking technology roadmap
  • Build and lead a dynamic demand pipeline—proactively sizing, prioritizing, and sequencing new initiatives to maximize business impact and innovation velocity
  • Establish leading-edge metrics and scorecards that measure transformational progress, not just delivery against static commitments, and use these insights to course-correct and accelerate outcomes with senior leadership
• Digital Transformation Partnership
  • Serve as a catalyst with the Digital Repair Strategy team, co-architecting the technology capabilities that will redefine the future state of SE&O operations
  • Lead cross-functional efforts to reimagine and measurably improve core business KPIs (Mean Time to Diagnose, Mean Time to Repair, RO Duration, FIR, etc.)—setting new performance benchmarks rather than maintaining current levels
• Talent & Culture Transformation
  • Cultivate a bold, inclusive team culture that attracts top talent and unleashes innovative thinking, empowering a diverse, customer-obsessed team to challenge convention
  • Elevate team capability through ambitious training and development targets that build future-ready skillsets
  • Drive meaningful Individual Development Plans that stretch employees toward new competencies and career growth
  • Foster a coaching culture rooted in continuous feedback, team empowerment, and process reinvention to unlock each employee's full potential
• Culture & Leadership
  • Model and champion Ford OS behaviors, actively driving the team toward breakthrough Excellence, Focus, and Collaboration
  • Champion work-life balance as a strategic enabler of sustained high performance and innovation, not just a supportive perk

Requirements

This leader should be comfortable and familiar in representing the voice of the dealer & technician when interfacing with other cross-functional teams, along with maintaining a voice-of-the-customer mindset in driving toward continuous improvement of operations.

• Education & Experience
  • BS in MIS, CS, or IT - Master's degree preferred
  • Prior experience in systems architecture, IT Governance, vendor/service management, and IT alignment with business processes
  • Familiarity and experience with Dealer Operations preferred
  • 5+ years' experience in leading a larger team (40+) required
• Technical & Systems Competencies
  • Enterprise IT Architecture Knowledge – Understanding of complex, interconnected system landscapes
  • Systems Thinking – Ability to see how changes in one system ripple across an interconnected digital ecosystem
  • IT Modernization & Digital Transformation Acumen – Familiarity with legacy system migration, cloud strategies, API integration, and platform modernization approaches
  • Data & Analytics Fluency – Comfort with KPI dashboards, scorecards, and translating metrics (MTTD, MTTR, RO Duration, FIR) into actionable insight
• Strategic & Business Leadership
  • Strategic Planning & Roadmapping – Ability to translate a multi-year vision into executable plans and prioritized backlogs
  • Business Case Development & Prioritization (T-shirt sizing, demand intake) – Skilled in evaluating competing priorities against resource constraints
  • Financial/Budget Acumen – Experience managing or influencing IT budgets, cost-benefit tradeoffs, and vendor/partner spend
  • Executive Communication & Influence – Ability to synthesize complex technical status into clear narratives for senior leadership
  • Vendor/Partner Management – Experience serving as a liaison between business and IT organizations (e.g., FCSD Tech)
• Change & Transformation Leadership
  • Change Management – Skilled in leading teams and stakeholders through modernization initiatives and process transformation
  • Innovation Mindset – Willingness to challenge status quo processes and drive continuous improvement
  • Risk Management – Balancing system stability/robustness with the pace of transformation and new capability delivery
  • Agile/Iterative Delivery Knowledge – Familiarity with agile methodologies for managing IT delivery timelines and roadmaps

Benefits

• 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

Schedule

This position is hybrid. Candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location may be required to be onsite four or more days per week.