Software Engineering Manager

Leadership and Team Management

Lead and inspire the Kubernetes Platform Services team focused on delivering secure, scalable, and automated container orchestration at Ford. Develop and execute strategic initiatives to optimize Kubernetes cluster deployment and operational efficiency. Drive the team to consistently achieve performance goals and high-quality service delivery.

Technical Architecture and Oversight

Own the end-to-end design, deployment, and lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters, ensuring seamless integration across Ford’s on-premise environments. Guarantee the clusters meet stringent requirements for availability, scalability, security, and resource efficiency.

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Enablement

Partner deeply with application developers, platform engineers, and infrastructure teams to understand needs and provide expert Kubernetes guidance and troubleshooting support. Foster a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning within the team and across Ford’s technical organization.

Innovation, Standardization, and Continuous Improvement

Stay abreast of cutting-edge Kubernetes developments and cloud-native best practices. Lead the adoption of innovations that improve deployment automation, cluster lifecycle management, security compliance, and observability. Establish and enforce standardized processes to ensure consistent, reliable, and secure Kubernetes operations organization-wide.

Developer Experience

Focus on developer/consumption experience as a first class citizen through simplification of environment provisioning and application deployment.

Requirements

• 8+ years of overall Software Engineering / IT Experience
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a closely related technical discipline.
• Extensive Kubernetes Expertise: Proven experience managing, deploying, and scaling Kubernetes clusters in production environments, ideally across hybrid cloud and on-premises data centers.
• Cloud Platform Proficiency: Strong working knowledge of one or more public cloud platforms (preferably Google Cloud Platform, AWS, or Azure) including container native services, networking, IAM, and storage integrations.
• Experience with Service Mesh Technologies: Hands-on experience with Istio, Linkerd, or other service mesh platforms to enhance security, observability, and traffic management.
• Strong Background in Monitoring & Observability Tools: Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Dynatrace/Datadog, ELK stack, or Google Stackdriver for end-to-end observability and proactive incident detection.
• Experience Leading Large-Scale Automation Initiatives: Past success automating infrastructure provisioning, deployments, and operational tasks using advanced CI/CD tooling integrated with Kubernetes platforms.
• Infrastructure Automation and CI/CD: Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code tools (e.g., Terraform, Kustomize), Kubernetes operators, and continuous integration/deployment pipelines for containerized applications.
• Security and Compliance: Solid understanding of cloud-native security best practices, container security, and compliance frameworks relevant to enterprise IT environments
• Strong Stakeholder Engagement: Demonstrated ability influencing at senior management levels and driving enterprise-wide adoption of platform standards and best practices.

Benefits

Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage
Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care 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