The role
From Ford's own posting.
Ford Motor Company is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for eCommerce to lead the software engineering delivery organization behind Ford.com's vehicle purchase experience. This is a high-impact leadership role at the intersection of technology, customer experience, and automotive innovation shaping how customers discover, configure, and purchase their next Ford vehicle online.
In this role, you will oversee a multi-layered engineering organization, guiding Engineering Managers who each lead 2–3 Scrum teams of anchors and software engineers building modern front-end experiences primarily in React and Next.js. You will set the technical direction, delivery rigor, and talent development strategy needed to consistently ship seamless, high-converting digital purchase journeys at scale.
Success in this role requires close partnership with Product, Design, Architecture, and platform teams to translate business priorities into well-sequenced, high-quality delivery roadmaps. You will be equally focused on growing the leadership bench strength of your management team building the engineering capability needed to scale across the vehicle purchase domain.
This is an opportunity to make a direct, visible impact on Ford's digital transformation, driving an industry-leading purchase experience that reflects the company's commitment to innovation and customer-centric excellence in automotive eCommerce.
As Senior Engineering Manager, your responsibilities will include:
Leading and developing a team of Engineering Managers, providing coaching, performance feedback, and career development to build a strong, capable management bench.
Overseeing end-to-end software delivery across multiple Scrum teams supporting online vehicle purchase capabilities, ensuring predictable, high-quality releases aligned with product roadmaps.
Partnering with Product Management and Design leadership to translate business objectives and customer purchase-journey priorities into actionable engineering plans and sprint commitments.
Driving Agile delivery excellence across teams, including sprint planning, backlog health, velocity, and predictability, while removing organizational impediments to team flow.
Establishing and maintaining engineering standards, front-end architecture patterns, and best practices for React/Next.js development to ensure consistency, scalability, and maintainability across teams.
Partnering with Architecture and platform/backend engineering teams to ensure front-end capabilities integrate seamlessly with backend and platform services supporting the purchase funnel.
Monitoring team and delivery health metrics (velocity, quality, cycle time, defect rates) and proactively addressing risks to timelines or quality.
Championing engineering talent strategy, including hiring, onboarding, skills development, and succession planning across the engineering organization.
Fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement across Scrum teams.
Collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders, including UX, QA, Security, and Compliance, to ensure delivery of secure, accessible, and customer-friendly purchase experiences.
Communicating delivery status, risks, and dependencies clearly to senior leadership and stakeholders, balancing technical detail with business context.
Driving resource planning and capacity management across teams, ensuring the right skills are aligned to the right initiatives.
Promoting engineering rigor around code quality, testing, and release practices, partnering with QA and DevOps to ensure reliable, low-defect releases.
Championing innovation and evaluation of new front-end technologies, frameworks, and tools that improve developer productivity and customer experience.
Evaluate and drive adoption of agentic SDLC tools and workflows, partnering with Architecture and Platform teams to ensure responsible, secure, and effective integration into delivery pipelines.
These responsibilities ensure the consistent, high-quality delivery of Ford's online vehicle purchase capabilities, building a scalable, talented engineering organization that supports Ford's digital commerce leadership.
Education Qualification:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field required.
Master's degree (e.g., MBA, MS in Computer Science, or related) preferred but not required.
Number of Years of Experience:
15+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including significant front-end/web application development.
10+ years of people leadership experience, including at least 5+ years managing managers (i.e., leading leaders, not just individual contributors).
5+ years of experience leading Agile/Scrum-based delivery organizations, within eCommerce, digital retail, or consumer-facing product environments.
Prior experience in automotive, retail, or high-traffic consumer eCommerce platforms is a plus.
Leadership Skills and Personality Traits:
Proven ability to lead and develop other engineering managers, building bench strength and a strong leadership pipeline.
Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence Product, Design, Architecture, and senior business leaders.
Excellent communicator who can flex between technical depth and executive-level business communication.
Servant-leader mindset with a track record of removing impediments and enabling teams to perform at their best.
Comfortable operating with a degree of ambiguity, prioritizing competing demands across multiple teams and initiatives.
Data-driven decision-maker who uses delivery metrics and team health indicators to guide coaching and prioritization.
Passion for talent development, mentorship, and creating an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture.
Resilient and adaptable, able to navigate organizational change and shifting business priorities with composure.
Forward-thinking leader who stays current on emerging AI-assisted and agentic development practices, and proactively evaluates their application to improve team productivity and delivery outcomes.
Champions a culture of experimentation and continuous learning, encouraging engineering managers and teams to responsibly adopt AI tooling without compromising code quality, security, or engineering rigor.
Functional/Technical Skills:
Strong working knowledge of front-end engineering practices, with hands-on leadership experience in React and Next.js.
Solid understanding of front-end architecture concepts (component design, performance optimization, accessibility, and responsive design).
Familiarity with modern front-end tooling and practices, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and version control (e.g., Git).
Working knowledge of Agile/Scrum methodologies and delivery frameworks (e.g., SAFe, Scrum, Kanban), including experience with tools such as Jira.
Understanding of API integration patterns relevant to front-end teams, including RESTful services and GraphQL consumption, and how front-end teams collaborate with backend/platform teams via well-defined contracts.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines including deployment strategies such as canary releases, feature flagging, and progressive rollouts.
Solid grasp of web performance engineering concepts, including Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID/INP, CLS), bundle size optimization, caching strategies (CDN, browser, edge caching), and rendering strategy trade-offs (SSR vs. CSR).
Working knowledge of AI-assisted software engineering tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, or similar AI coding assistants) and their application to accelerate front-end development, code review, and testing.
Familiarity with agentic SDLC concepts including AI agents capable of autonomously executing multi-step engineering tasks (e.g., code generation, test creation, bug triage, PR review) and the governance considerations (code quality, security, and human-in-the-loop review) required to adopt them responsibly.
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