Staff Data Platform and Products Architect

Ford Motor Company

Staff Data Platform Architect overseeing data architecture and leading cloud solutions for Ford's electric vehicle initiatives. Engaging in the design and implementation of scalable, performant data platforms.

Posted 7/16/2026full-timeDearborn • Missouri • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $132,800 - $250,800 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in architecting scalable data solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and implementing high-performance data pipelines. Proficient in designing secure APIs, enforcing data governance, and automating infrastructure deployments using modern tools and methodologies.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ArchitectureData Pipeline Development Using Apache BeamAPI Design and Implementation (RESTful, gRPC)Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, GitOps)Data Modeling and Transformation (SQL, Spark)

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Hard Skills

Python ProgrammingSQL DevelopmentJava ProgrammingData ArchitectureEvent-Driven StreamingSchema Governance (Protobuf)Containerization (Docker, Buildah)CI/CD Automation (GitHub Actions, Tekton)Data Modeling Patterns (Dimensional Modeling, Data Vault)Cloud Storage Solutions (BigQuery, BigTable)

Soft Skills

Technical LeadershipMentorshipCollaborationProblem-SolvingCommunication

Tools & Technologies

Apache KafkaApache AirflowGoogle Kubernetes Engine (GKE)Cloud RunPub/SubDataflowDataprocTerraform (HCL)Jinja TemplatingGit Submodules

Industry Keywords

Data EngineeringPlatform EngineeringCloud ArchitectureInfrastructure AutomationData Governance

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowApacheAWSAzureBigQueryBootstrapCloudDockerGoGoogle Cloud PlatformGRPCJavaKafkaKubernetesMicroservicesPythonSparkSQLTerraformVault

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Architect Scalable Platform Solutions: Design, build, and govern highly performant, distributed data solutions on GCP, leveraging BigQuery, Dataproc, Dataflow, BigTable, Cloud Storage, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, and Vertex AI to support global analytical, operational, and real-time streaming use cases.
Lead Cloud Data Integration & Streaming: Design and implement high-volume, event-driven streaming pipelines using GCP Pub/Sub, Apache Beam, and Apache Kafka. Build real-time stream processing systems to ingest and land high-volume events into optimized BigQuery analytical layers and low-latency BigTable operational stores.
Design & Productize APIs: Architect and implement secure, versioned, and highly performant RESTful and gRPC APIs that expose platform services and data products to internal and external consumers. Define API contracts, versioning strategies, and authentication/authorization patterns (OAuth, mTLS) to enable reliable self-service access.
Enforce Schema-First Governance: Champion data contract standardizations and shift-left data quality practices. Define and enforce data schemas using Protobuf and centralized Schema Registries, ensuring robust boundaries, backward compatibility, and semantic alignment across distributed producer and consumer teams.
Build Reusable Platform Frameworks: Design opinionated, extensible frameworks and libraries that abstract underlying infrastructure complexity. Enable product engineering teams to easily bootstrap and scaffold production-ready data pipelines and microservices through standardized templates, configuration-driven workflows, and automated code generation using Python and Jinja templating.
Drive Platform and Data Strategy: Collaborate with business, product, and engineering leaders to translate organizational objectives into executable architectural roadmaps. Establish clear, clean boundaries between core platform responsibilities and feature-team domain boundaries.
Automate Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC): Lead the GitOps lifecycle by designing and maintaining Terraform (HCL) configurations and automated CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Tekton) to ensure consistent, secure, and rapid infrastructure deployments across Dev, QA, and Production environments.
Model and Transform Data: Design and govern modern data modeling patterns (such as dimensional modeling, Data Vault, and event-based streaming schemas) across analytical tables, relational databases, and flat-file stores. Orchestrate distributed Spark batch processing, complex SQL transformations, and ML training pipelines using Apache Airflow.
Operate Containerized Services: Build, publish, and secure container images using Buildah and Docker, managing deployments to Cloud Run and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Automate container image promotion, environment progression, and artifact registry security through dedicated CI/CD pipelines.
Technical Leadership & Enablement: Provide hands-on mentorship and architectural guidance to data engineering teams. Establish best practices, design patterns, and style guides, while building developer-enablement tooling that minimizes onboarding friction and accelerates time-to-market.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
Experience: 7+ years of progressive technical experience in data architecture, platform engineering, or enterprise-scale data engineering.
Cloud Architecture: 3+ years of experience designing and operating end-to-end data platforms on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS, or Azure.
Programming Proficiency: 3+ years of practical application development experience using Python, SQL, and Java (or Go/Bash) tailored for high-performance pipeline development, API creation, and automation scripting.
Platform Scaffolding: Experience building at least 1 centralized developer ecosystem or developer-facing templating framework using Git submodules or standardized repositories.
Location: Must live within reasonable commuting distance of Dearborn, MI to support a hybrid work model.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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