Director, Strategy & Operations

In this position...

The Director Strategy & Operations will act as a business strategist for the Software Factory defining how software is built deployed and maintained at scale. This leader bridges engineering product and business stakeholders to ensure technical operations translate into business value. The position combines strategic planning operational governance and analytics accountabilityestablishing release rhythms guiding investment decisions improving delivery health and identifying bottlenecks across the software value stream. Over time the role is expected to build and lead a small team spanning release management operations and analytics.

What youll do...

• Establish and govern a predictable software release operating model including go/no-go processes release calendars and delivery rituals.
• Lead release preparation deployment readiness activities and early warranty/hyper-care support while driving long-term automation of these workflows.
• Define operational standards for reliability security scalability and delivery consistency across engineering teams.
• Partner with engineering leaders and product managers to align delivery capacity roadmap timing and market commitments.
• Translate technical issues delivery risks and environment instability into clear business impacts for executive stakeholders.
• Develop investment strategies for infrastructure tooling and vendor partnerships including buy-versus-build decisions and ROI cases.
• Monitor and improve software factory performance through metrics such as deployment health uptime cost efficiency and DORA performance.
• Identify bottlenecks and sources of manual toil across the delivery lifecycle then drive process improvement and automation.
• Lead operational reviews using data to assess system health release performance and budget adherence.
• Build and scale a high-performing team to support release operations operational governance and analytics.

Youll have...

• Experience leading operational excellence in a high-stakes delivery or production environment ideally using Lean Six Sigma or similar frameworks.
• Strong understanding of software delivery operations release management DevOps practices and CI/CD transformation.
• Demonstrated ability to build business cases and connect engineering investments to financial outcomes such as productivity speed and cost efficiency.
• Experience managing vendor SaaS cloud or managed service relationships including performance accountability through SLAs.
• Strong change management capability with the ability to move organizations from manual hero-based processes to standardized automated operating models.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with engineering product finance procurement and executive leadership.
• Strong analytical skills with experience using operational metrics and dashboards to drive performance improvement.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure developer tooling and modern software delivery environments.
• Automotive industry experience is helpful but not required; candidates can learn domain-specific complexities such as OTA telematics and hardware/software integration on the job.
• Prior experience building or scaling teams in release operations platform operations or engineering business operations is preferred.

You may not check every box or your experience may look a little different from what weve 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 builderor 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 childcare 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 Years Day
Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.
This position is a leadership level 4.
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidates skills and experience and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope responsibility and competitive market value.

For more information on salary and benefits click here: 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 the United States if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability please call 1-.

This position is hybrid (onsite four days per week) for candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location or remote for non-local candidates.

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