Forward Deployed Engineer – Advanced Manufacturing
Ford Motor10 hours ago
Dearborn, MI, USASenior
Base Salary
$115k - $193k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and deploy software connecting automated equipment, sensors, PLC-adjacent data, MES workflows, quality systems, warehouse systems, and cloud platforms.
- Design and operate IIoT and edge data flows using MQTT, OPC-UA, edge gateways, time-series data, event-driven systems, and manufacturing data models.
- Embed with plant and business stakeholders to understand production problems and translate them into deployed 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 delivery across application engineering, cloud infrastructure, edge deployment, integrations, automation, observability, and production support.
- Engineer secure, reliable, maintainable systems with appropriate access controls, secrets management, network boundaries, auditability, vulnerability management, and production safeguards.
- Apply generative AI, applied ML, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and intelligent automation to manufacturing use cases where they provide measurable value.
- Contribute to software, data, security, integration, and deployment standards through design and code reviews.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as a software engineer, manufacturing systems engineer, industrial software engineer, solutions engineer, or similar hands-on engineering role.
- Production software engineering experience spanning application, cloud, edge, and data layers.
- Experience with manufacturing environments, automation systems, plant-floor data, MES integrations, industrial equipment, quality systems, maintenance workflows, or production operations.
- Required familiarity 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 involving OEE, throughput, downtime, cycle time, bottleneck detection, 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.
- Strongly preferred experience with highly automated facilities, controls-adjacent systems, launch or ramp environments, identity and access management, secrets handling, vulnerability remediation, audit logging, network controls, and secure deployment practices.
- Experience with data platforms, streaming architectures, and AI/ML-enabled automation is a plus.
- Ability to work onsite with operators and engineers, troubleshoot real systems, operate autonomously, and communicate across software, controls, operations, quality, maintenance, product, and business teams.
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, employee resource groups, community-service paid time off, paid holidays, and paid vacation with an option to purchase additional vacation time.
- Hybrid position requiring onsite work four or more days per week.
- The role will initially be employed by Ford and is expected to transition to a wholly owned battery 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.