Description

Job Description

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.

Responsibilities

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.

Qualifications

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