In this position...
In this pivotal role, you will focus heavily on root cause resolution within the InVehicle Infotainment (IVI) domain, tracing failures that span across HMI layers, core infotainment services, and connected backend architectures. You will investigate critical issues using system logs, core dumps, and other diagnostic artifacts to trace problems that cannot be easily replicated on a test bench. As a technical leader, you will conduct exhaustive multi-project investigations, review structural designs to identify systemic risks, and directly analyze source code to reverse-engineer and fix critical platform constraints. You will bridge diverse software layers, coordinate cross-functional engineering and validation teams, and permanently resolve complex, architectural level defects across the platform. This role also involves operating within modern, scaled SDLC and Agile/Scrum environments, contributing to structural architectural decisions, and driving software quality and maintainability.
What you'll do...
• Lead Complex System Investigations: Direct the technical root-cause analysis, triage, isolation, and resolution of critical, hard-to-reproduce software failures and bug reports occurring intermittently in production environments. • Deep-Dive Low-Level Diagnostics: Master the investigation of system logs, core dumps, memory leaks, and corruptions to trace transient defects, multi-threaded bottlenecks, IPC deadlocks, and system crashes across compute-constrained ECU platforms. • Target IVI & Back-End Triage: Isolate complex software defects primarily originating within the IVI platform, tracing dependencies through microservices and external back-end APIs that interface with the vehicle. • AI-Driven Diagnostics & Knowledge Training: Utilize advanced AI tools, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to accelerate trace parsing, while documenting analytical approaches to train diagnostic models for improved automated insights. • Vehicle Communication & Protocol Analysis: Analyze vehicle bus communications using CAN, Ethernet, and other automotive protocols to isolate data mismatches, timing issues, and trace signal transmission across distributed ECUs. • Diagnostic Tools & DTC Tracking: Utilize specialized automotive diagnostic tools to read, interpret, and resolve Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs), tracking issues from electronic symptoms to specific source code line failures. • In-Vehicle Validation & Testing: Conduct direct vehicle-level validation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, and physical bench setups to verify software behavior, replicate production artifacts, and guarantee real-time reliability and performance on target embedded hardware. • Manage Polyglot, Full-Stack Multi-Component Ecosystems: Leverage broad technical mastery spanning high-level web frameworks (JavaScript/React HMI), backend services, databases, and low-level native embedded software (C/C++) to implement, optimize, navigate, and trace bugs across diverse repositories and subsystems. • Source Code & Documentation Mastery: Audit, optimize, implement, and maintain critical codebases for embedded platforms while authoring detailed technical documentation, architectural specifications, and long-term engineering blueprints. • Modern SDLC & Technical Governance: Operate within modern, scaled SDLC and Agile/Scrum environments to contribute to structural architectural decisions, review high-level designs (HLD), establish strict acceptance criteria, and drive software quality and maintainability. • Feature Dependency & Lifecycle Management: Define and manage complex feature dependencies, blockers, and risk registers across HMI, services, platform components, and validation to prevent software regressions across program lifecycles. • Cross-Functional & Cross-Cultural Alignment: Act as the core technical lead for multi-project defect investigations, driving technical consensus across internal global teams, hardware engineering, validation, product owners, Tier-1 suppliers, and third-party OS providers (such as QNX). • Team Mentorship & Quality Leadership: Elevate overall engineering capabilities by leading comprehensive code reviews, establishing technical onboarding processes, mentoring other engineers, and conducting core technical interviews.
You'll have...
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related technical STEM field. • 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a core focus on complex architectural development and full lifecycle ownership. • 8+ years of expert-level experience tracing, debugging, and optimizing native software applications using C/C++ within real-time operating systems (RTOS) like QNX. • 8+ years of hands-on experience designing and debugging multi-layered full-stack runtimes, explicitly combining asynchronous web frameworks (JavaScript, React, Redux, WebSockets) with low-level native embedded subsystems. • 6+ years of dedicated engineering experience within the Automotive Infotainment (IVI) and Human-Machine Interface (HMI) domains. • 5+ years of practical experience using advanced automotive vehicle network simulators and diagnostic tools—specifically VectorCAN — for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), bench, and in-vehicle validation testing. • Documented mastery in reverse-engineering source code and dissecting system logs, core dumps, memory management tools (e.g., Valgrind), and physical CAN data captures to triage, isolate, and resolve transient software crashes, multi-threaded bottlenecks, and memory corruptions. • Proven expertise diagnosing bugs that span across local IVI application layers, downstream ECUs, and connected cloud/back-end infrastructures. • Proven track record operating as a Technical Lead or Anchor within modern scaled Agile/Scrum environments, including leading technical code reviews and authoring High-Level Designs (HLD). • Experience with automotive communication protocols (e.g., CAN, Ethernet), MQTT, IPC, Valgrind, SonarQube, GTest, Git/GitHub Actions, SDLC and agile methodologies. • Experience with software optimization for performance and memory constraints.
Even better, you may have...
• Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Systems Research, or a related technical field. • Hands-on experience building or extending custom automated log-parsing and developer-velocity tools utilizing AI frameworks, Large Language Models (LLMs), LogAI, LangChain, or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures. • Broad polyglot architectural familiarity covering cross-platform environments, databases, and middleware communication technologies including QNX, Protocol Buffers, and Unreal Engine. • Extensive experience driving cross-functional and cross-cultural technical alignment across international engineering teams, validation groups, Tier-1 suppliers, and third-party platform partners. • Experience with UML, IT Project Risk Management, stakeholders management, dependencies management, software release management.
You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!
As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder…or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.
This position is a salary grade 8.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/GSR
Visa sponsorship is NOT available for this position.
Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.
Candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location may be required to be onsite four or more days per week. #LI-Hybrid #LI-LB1