Forward Deployed Engineer – Advanced Manufacturing
Ford Motor1 day 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 architectures, MQTT messaging, OPC-UA connectivity, edge gateways, time-series data flows, event-driven systems, and manufacturing data models.
- Embed with plant teams and translate production problems into deployed software solutions.
- Build analytics, dashboards, alerts, models, and workflows for throughput, uptime, downtime, OEE, quality, scrap, traceability, cycle time, bottlenecks, energy usage, and launch readiness.
- Own application engineering, cloud infrastructure, edge deployment, integrations, automation, observability, and production support end to end.
- Engineer secure solutions with identity and access controls, secrets management, network boundaries, auditability, vulnerability management, secure delivery, and production reliability.
- Apply generative AI, machine learning, 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 highly automated facilities.
Requirements
- At least 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 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, 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.
- Ability to take ambiguous operational problems from initial discussion through working production software and measurable manufacturing outcomes.
- Comfort working onsite in fast-changing manufacturing environments while balancing safety, reliability, cybersecurity, maintainability, uptime, and secure access.
- Excellent communication and relationship-building skills across software engineering, controls, operations, quality, maintenance, product, and business stakeholders.
- Ability to work autonomously with significant responsibility for shipped systems and the software-defined manufacturing playbook.
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 active employee resource groups.
- Paid time off for community service, paid holidays including the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, paid time off, and optional additional vacation purchase.
- This is a hybrid role requiring onsite work four or more days per week.
- The role is initially employed by Ford and is expected to transition to a wholly owned 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.