About Ford and ATP 

Ford Motor Company has endured and thrived for more than 118 years by reimagining how things are built. Today, Ford is leading a once-in-a-generation transformation in manufacturing — scaling EVs, integrating humanoid robotics, additive manufacturing, AI vision, and digital platforms into one seamless operating system: the Ford Production System (FPS/FPS+) that operates within the FAST framework. Ford Motor Company is undergoing a historic industrial shift — from building great vehicles to building great systems that scale across them. The Advanced Industrial Technology & Platforms (AITP) organisation was created to operationalise that shift. Our job is not to deploy isolated tools; it is to build a system that learns from factory truth, transforms it into scalable platforms, and turns those platforms into enterprise business value. Advanced Industrial Technology and Platforms (ATP) is a new, centralised organisation designed to position Ford to lead industrial innovation. This team will accelerate our digital evolution and manufacturing excellence — advancing the modernisation of our Ford Manufacturing operations with cutting-edge technology. As part of Ford Manufacturing, ATP is designed to integrate directly into our manufacturing sites, partner across teams (GME, safety, etc.) and drive innovation from initial idea to full implementation. 

ATP is led by Managing Director Yung Fung, reporting to Ford Chief Manufacturing Officer Bryce Currie. This structure includes four vertical business units — focused on specific technology stacks — and four horizontals — shared services designed to ensure scale, deployment, and operational consistency. 

As part of the AITP organisation, the Sight Vertical is responsible for building an end-to-end business around AI/ML anomaly detection products, operating as two product families. 

Sight.Sense detects anomalies in parametric data: Sense.Machine (MiniTerms) for machine performance anomaly prediction and optimisation; Sense.Tooling (AI ToolSense) for tooling life optimisation; Sense.Energy for optimisation of supplies consumption; Sense.Stamping for stamping process anomaly prediction and surface splits; and Sense.MILO for in-process test quality anomaly detection. 

Sight.Vision detects anomalies in image data: Vision.Scout for in-station visual error proofing across manual and automated processes; Vision.Surface for surface defect detection in components and vehicle bodies through the complete manufacturing process; and Vision.Station for manual process monitoring and anomaly detection covering productivity, quality and ergonomics. 

The Sight Vertical product portfolio are set to converge on the Sight Anomaly Platform, which builds on Ford's Core Systems layer (Core OS, CoreDS, Core AI and CoreApps/FPS+). Together they form Ford's scalable platform to deliver, process quality assurance, and zero-downtime, zero-defect manufacturing. 

How the Sight Vertical Works 

The Sight Vertical operates through value-focused, cross-functional product teams across two product families: Sight.Sense and Sight.Vision, each led by a Head of Product Family. Product Managers lead the product problem, desired outcome and priority. Engineers and product designers work with them to discover and deliver effective solutions. Engineering Managers retain people, capacity, technical-system and engineering-health accountability. 

This is a vertical-level role working across both product families. Priorities are agreed between the two Heads of Product and their Engineering Managers, so that your effort is directed by portfolio value. In addition, ATP Core provides the non-product engineering expertise the verticals depend on — enterprise standards, architecture, industrial controls, cybersecurity and platform guidance. This role holds a matrix reporting line into ATP Core to ensure alignment with those standards and ready access to that expertise. 

The Opportunity 

We are looking for a Data Engineer to build and operate the data foundations of the Sight portfolio — the pipelines that carry factory truth from PLCs, sensors, cameras and plant systems into a platform where anomalies can be detected reliably, at scale, across Ford's global manufacturing footprint. 

Sight data is genuinely hard: tens of thousands of monitored assets, billions of waveforms annually, high-volume image and video data from Vision.Scout, Vision.Surface and Vision.Station, event-driven and polled sources, mixed plant infrastructure, and legacy equipment that was never designed to be observed. Getting this right is what makes the models trustworthy — and model trust is what determines whether plants act on our products or ignore them. 

You will work at the intersection of operational technology, cloud data engineering and machine learning enablement, across both parametric data and image-based detection. 

This is a senior individual contributor role. As the senior data engineering voice in the Sight Vertical, you will set the data engineering standards others work to, mentor engineers working with Sight data, and be accountable for ensuring the data foundations do not depend on you personally to remain trustworthy. 

The Position 

You will report into the Sight Vertical Director, with a matrix reporting line into the ATP Core team. The Sight Vertical Director leads what you prioritise and holds performance and development accountability; ATP Core provides technical alignment, enterprise standards and access to non-product expertise.  

Working embedded within product streams across both families, you will partner with the Software Architect, Controls Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Software Engineers, data scientists, the Launch and Deployment Engineers and plant controls teams. You will provide technical direction and mentorship to engineers on data-related work. 

This is a senior individual contributor position with indirect leadership expectations. 

You will work primarily on Google Cloud Platform, Ford's strategic cloud platform, and engage with CoreDS and Core AI as the strategic data and ML platform direction for the Sight Vertical. 

Requires availability to travel internationally on occasion to understand plant data sources at source.