Forward Deployed Engineer Advanced Manufacturing, Ford Energy
Ford Motor1 month ago
Dearborn, MI, USASenior
Base Salary
$115k - $193k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and deploy software connecting automated equipment, sensors, MES workflows, quality systems, warehouse systems, and cloud platforms.
- Design and operate IIoT architectures, MQTT messaging, OPC-UA connectivity, edge gateways, time-series data flows, event-driven systems, and manufacturing data models.
- Embed with manufacturing, controls, maintenance, quality, process engineering, product, and operations teams to define problems and deliver production software.
- Build analytics, dashboards, alerts, models, and workflows for throughput, uptime, downtime, OEE, quality, scrap, traceability, cycle time, bottlenecks, energy usage, and launch readiness.
- Own end-to-end application engineering, cloud infrastructure, edge deployment, integrations, automation, observability, and production support.
- Design secure, reliable, maintainable systems for highly controlled manufacturing environments, including identity, access control, secrets management, network boundaries, auditability, vulnerability management, and secure delivery.
- Apply generative AI, applied ML, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and intelligent automation to manufacturing operations where they provide measurable value.
- Contribute to software, data, security, integration, architecture, code review, and deployment standards for scalable automated facilities.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as a software engineer, manufacturing systems engineer, industrial software engineer, solutions engineer, or similar hands-on engineering professional.
- Demonstrated experience with manufacturing environments, automation systems, plant-floor data, MES integrations, industrial equipment, quality systems, maintenance workflows, or production operations.
- Hands-on experience with IIoT architectures, MQTT, OPC-UA, edge gateways, industrial protocols, event-driven architectures, time-series data, sensor ingestion, and secure plant-to-cloud connectivity.
- Ability to build or support manufacturing analytics for OEE, throughput, downtime, cycle time, bottlenecks, quality, scrap, traceability, energy consumption, and asset performance.
- Experience with Go, Python, TypeScript, API design, OpenShift, GCP or comparable cloud platforms, containerized services, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, observability, and secure production operations.
- Experience with identity and access management, secrets handling, vulnerability remediation, audit logging, network controls, and secure deployment practices is strongly preferred.
- Experience with data platforms, streaming architectures, and AI/ML-enabled automation is a plus.
- Track record of taking ambiguous operational problems from initial discovery through working production software and measurable outcomes.
- Ability to work onsite with operators and engineers and balance speed with safety, reliability, cybersecurity, maintainability, uptime, and controlled-production requirements.
- Strong communication and relationship-building skills across software, controls, operations, quality, maintenance, product, and business stakeholders.
Benefits
- Immediate medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.
- Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new-parent ramp-up programs, and subsidized backup childcare.
- Family-building benefits including adoption and surrogacy reimbursement and fertility treatments.
- Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases.
- Tuition assistance and established employee resource groups.
- Paid time off for individual and team community service.
- Paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, plus paid time off and an option to purchase additional vacation time.
- Hybrid work arrangement requiring onsite attendance four or more days per week.
- The role will initially be employed by Ford and is expected to transition to its wholly owned energy-storage subsidiary within one year.
Tech Stack
Categories
Forward Deployed
About Ford Motor
Ford Motor Company designs, manufactures, and sells cars, trucks, SUVs, and commercial vehicles for consumers and businesses, and provides financing through Ford Credit. A public company headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan and listed on the NYSE, it operates globally under the Ford and Lincoln brands, including electric and connected vehicles such as the F‑150 Lightning and Mustang Mach‑E. Founded in 1903, it also offers software-driven fleet, mobility, and aftersales services.