Ford’s Enterprise Architecture Dev-Enablement organization builds the internal portals, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native patterns that thousands of Ford software engineers use every day. We are looking for a hands-on Technical Product Manager who can speak the language of developers and business stakeholders alike, run an OKR-driven roadmap, and keep day-to-day execution humming.
You’ll partner with a squad of full-stack engineers to deliver the next generation of Ford’s Developer Portal and companion tooling.
What You’ll Do
1. Product Strategy & Vision
- Co-own product strategy with the Product Owner; ensure it supports Ford’s broader Digital Platform and EA goals.
- Define OKRs that connect developer experience metrics (DORA, NPS, MTTR) to business outcomes (time-to-market, warranty cost reduction).
2. Technical Discovery & Road-mapping
- Shadow engineers, join architecture reviews, and dig through source code to uncover friction points.
- Translate findings into a living roadmap of epics, features, and tech-debt items prioritized by value and feasibility.
3. Backlog & Agile Execution
- Administer the Jira board end-to-end: workflow design, story writing, sizing, and sprint health dashboards.
- Maintain a Workboard of Objectives that ties sprint goals to quarterly OKRs.
- Lead backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and demos; keep all artifacts current.
4. Operational Rhythm & Reporting
- Chair weekly operational check-ins and monthly business reviews; publish concise status reports on scope, schedule, cost, risk, and KPIs.
- Track and surface blockers early; coordinate cross-team dependencies (Security, CloudOps, Development).
5. Risk & Dependency Management
- Map cross-team dependencies (Security, CloudOps, Development) and bake them into release plans.
- Maintain mitigation plans for scalability, security, and compliance risks.
6. Release & Adoption
- Coordinate with internal communication team to coordinate marketing campaigns.
- Drive internal marketing—brown-bags, blog posts, RFCs—to achieve target adoption curves.
7. Instrumentation & Continuous Improvement
- Instrument products with Countersquare, Aurora, Dynatrace and other analytics to measure adoption, performance, and stability.
- Facilitate retrospectives that translate directly into process or tooling upgrades.
Our Tech Environment
- Front-end: React, TypeScript, Angular
- Back-end: Java (Spring Boot / Kotlin)
- Cloud & DevOps: GCP, Kubernetes (GKE & OpenShift), Terraform, Tekton, GitHub Actions, SonarQube
- Data & Messaging: PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis
- Observability: Dynatrace, Grafana, Countersquare, Splunk
- Collaboration: GitHub, Jira, Teams, Backstage
You don’t have to write production code every day, but you must be able to read a pull request, white-board a micro-service topology, and discuss the trade-offs of various deployment patterns.
Required Skills & Experience
- 5+ years in software product development, including 2+ years as a Product Manager OR 3+ years as a software/DevOps engineer plus 1–2 years PM experience.
- Demonstrated success delivering internal platforms or developer-focused products using Agile practices.
- Familiarity with modern CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code, container orchestration, and cloud-native patterns (Tekton & OpenShift preferred).
- Strong analytical chops; comfortable using Countersquare, DORA metrics, or custom dashboards to guide decisions.
- Proven ability to create and present executive-level decks that distill complex technological data into clear business insights.
- Excellent written and verbal communication—able to translate technical details for non-technical stakeholders and vice-versa.
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
Desired Extras
- Demonstrated experience building, operating, or product-managing developer portals (e.g., Backstage, Azure Developer Portal) or a strong desire to dive into that space.
- Familiarity or demonstrated capability to get along with additional DevEx tooling such as Buildkite, Harness, CircleCI, or similar platforms.
Open-source maintainer/contributor, public tech talks, or published technical writing