Job DescriptionSuccess as a Functional Engineering Program Manager Lead requires a leader who brings structure to ambiguity, drives delivery clarity across complex technical teams, and ensures predictable execution against the most important domain outcomes.
As the Functional EPM Lead for Device Connectivity Platform (DCP), within Vehicle Cloud & Mobile (VC&M), you will own the domain's delivery management operating model and partner closely with the VC&M EPM Lead, Functional Engineering Leads, TPMs, Engineering Managers, and the Domain Director to establish clear delivery roadmaps, manage execution health, and ensure risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs are visible and actively addressed.
This role is accountable for creating streamlined visibility into the domain's delivery status and cascading clear, actionable updates to domain and executive leadership. You will coordinate closely with counterpart Functional EPM Leads across other domains to align on cross-domain dependencies, shared practices, and delivery governance.
You will also provide functional leadership, either directly or indirectly, to EPMs supporting the Device Connectivity Platform domain, ensuring their activities are aligned to domain priorities and consistent with VC&M delivery processes, standards, tools, and cadences.
In addition, you may participate in or lead work intake discovery squads as the EPM Scoping Lead, ensuring discovery work is completed on time, blockers are removed, outputs are organized, and sagas are tracked through the appropriate lifecycle.
ResponsibilitiesWhat you'll do:- Own the Device Connectivity Platform domain delivery management system, ensuring work is aligned to VC&M strategy, domain priorities, and agreed delivery outcomes.
- Partner with the VC&M EPM Lead, Functional Engineering Leads, TPMs, Engineering Managers, and the Domain Director to define and maintain clear delivery roadmaps, milestones, dependencies, execution plans, and delivery commitments.
- Drive predictability of delivery outcomes by establishing disciplined planning structures, governance cadences, Jira hygiene, delivery artifacts, reporting mechanisms, and escalation paths.
- Serve as the primary EPM leader for domain delivery status, ensuring the Domain Director and executive leadership have clear visibility into progress, risks, issues, dependencies, tradeoffs, and decision needs.
- Coordinate with counterpart Functional EPM Leads across other VC&M domains to manage cross-domain dependencies, align delivery sequencing, and support consistency with the broader VC&M operating model.
- Provide functional leadership, either directly or indirectly, and coaching to EPMs supporting the Device Connectivity Platform domain, ensuring their activities are aligned to domain priorities and consistent with VC&M delivery processes, standards, tools, and cadences.
- Challenge and de-prioritize work that does not support strategy or agreed priorities, in partnership with TPMs, Product, Engineering, and VC&M leadership.
- Ensure domain work has clear scope, acceptance criteria, owners, intended outcomes, and measurable value; validate with Engineering, TPMs, and Product whether completed work delivered the expected outcomes.
- Participate in or lead work intake discovery squads as the EPM Scoping Lead, ensuring scoping and discovery work is completed on time, blockers are removed, outputs are organized, and squad capacity and throughput are managed.
- Apply and help evolve common VC&M standards for intake, discovery, planning, delivery governance, reporting, and execution health.
How you'll do it:- Build strong partnerships across Engineering, EPM, TPM, Product, and domain leadership.
- Lead through influence, clarity, and accountability across teams that may not share the same reporting structure.
- Bring structure to ambiguous, fast-moving, or cross-functional delivery challenges by establishing clear plans, documented decisions, tradeoffs, and follow-through.
- Communicate clearly and effectively, translating complex technical and delivery details into clear insights for engineering teams, domain leadership, and executive stakeholders.
- Use data and delivery signals, including risks, dependencies, throughput, capacity, milestone health, and execution trends, to inform priorities, escalations, and leadership actions.
- Establish consistent operating mechanisms that make delivery status trustworthy, comparable, and actionable across the domain and broader VC&M organization.
- Balance strategic domain-level leadership with hands-on execution support when needed to unblock progress, drive outcomes, and improve delivery predictability.
- Foster a culture of transparency, disciplined execution, ownership, consistency, and continuous improvement across EPM practices.
QualificationsYou'll have...- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 8+ years of experience in software/services delivery environments (product/platform/feature delivery).
- 5+ years of experience coordinating complex cross-functional delivery across multiple disciplines (engineering, program, product, design, QA/test, systems, operations, etc.).
- 3+ years of experience leading, mentoring, coaching, or functionally guiding other program managers, project managers, or delivery-focused teams.
- 5+ years of experience with delivery tooling (e.g., Atlassian Suite, Miro) and disciplined delivery hygiene (plans, dashboards, dependency tracking).
- 5+ years of experience operating in scaled delivery models, including quarterly planning, multi-team roadmapping, backlog governance, portfolio governance, intake management, and cross-domain dependency planning.
- 3+ years of experience defining, implementing, and improving standards, templates, mechanisms, and cadences that improve delivery consistency across teams.
- Ability to synthesize complex information for diverse audiences, ranging from executive briefings that drive decision-making to detailed execution guidance for engineering teams.
- Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence without authority across engineering, product, program, and executive stakeholders.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to create clear leadership updates, decision documents, escalation summaries, and delivery health reports.
Preferred:- Experience delivering connected vehicle services, vehicle telematics capabilities, and cloud-based platforms that support vehicle connectivity and customer experiences.
This position is leadership level 5 and ranges from $141,700-$228,300.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL5
This position is hybrid with a requirement to be onsite four or more days per week. #LI-Hybrid
#DP2
