Job DescriptionIn this position...This role requires a leader who brings deep technical knowledge of enterprise AI platforms and the strategic judgment to look across every platform EPEO offers - spanning leading AI and cloud platform providers - and define where AI belongs, what it should change, and how the organization gets there. This is not an operational role. It is the most forward-looking mandate in the platform organization: a cross-cutting AI strategy and enablement function with authority across all platform organizations.
The Senior Director, AI Platform Engineering & Enablement brings two equally weighted mandates. On the engineering side, this leader applies deep technical judgment to evaluate, architect, and govern how AI capabilities are integrated across EPEO's platform portfolio - ensuring what is deployed is the right capability, properly engineered, and fit for the business functions it serves. On the enablement side, this leader ensures AI capabilities from our major providers are not just procured but actively activated, governed, and embedded into how our platforms operate. This person does not wait for the organization to ask what AI can do. They already know, and they have a plan.
ResponsibilitiesWhat you'll do...AI Portfolio Strategy & Platform AssessmentOwn the cross-platform AI strategy across all of EPEO's platform portfolio:
- Maintain a comprehensive, enterprise-wide view of how AI is strategically positioned across every platform EPEO operates - what is deployed, what it is being used for across business functions, whether it is the right capability for the problem, and where gaps or redundancies exist
- Continuously evaluate AI capabilities across all major providers and platforms against EPEO's current operating model:
- Leading cloud platform AI services and infrastructure
- Enterprise AI assistant and productivity platforms
- Frontier AI model providers and API platforms
- Emerging AI providers and infrastructure primitives
- Define and own the cross-platform AI strategy roadmap - a prioritized, forward-looking plan for how AI should evolve across the platform organization over the next one to three years
- Identify where AI creates step-change opportunities in platform operations: what can be automated, augmented, or fundamentally re-architected rather than incrementally improved
- Challenge existing platform assumptions - bring a clear-eyed view of where current approaches should be replaced by AI-native alternatives, not just enhanced by them
AI Enablement Across the Platform OrganizationDrive activation and adoption of AI capabilities across all platforms EPEO operates:
- Partner with Platform Engineering, Developer Experience, Employee Experience, Foundational Platform, and Digital Core Platforms to move AI capabilities from available to embedded - integrated into how platforms are built, operated, and improved across the enterprise
- Serve as the strategic AI advisor across all platform organizations - providing a consistent, cross-cutting AI lens that individual platform teams cannot maintain on their own
- Build and govern the AI portfolio framework for EPEO: how AI investments are categorized, evaluated for fit, measured for value, and reported to executive leadership
- Drive internal alignment across platform organizations on AI priorities, sequencing, and shared standards - operating with influence across teams that do not report directly into this role
- Develop internal AI platform fluency - bring platform engineering and SRE leadership along on the AI journey through structured evaluation frameworks and shared strategic context
AI Governance, Risk & FinOpsEstablish the governance and financial management layer for AI across the enterprise platform portfolio:
- Build and own the AI governance framework spanning all providers: model selection criteria, acceptable use policies, data classification standards for AI inputs, and enterprise risk guardrails
- Own AI FinOps as a strategic discipline:
- Consumption visibility and cost attribution by platform, team, and use case
- Model tier efficiency and cost-per-outcome tracking
- Enterprise-wide ROI reporting on AI investment across all platform providers
- Budget governance and spend forecasting for AI at the EPEO portfolio level
- Ensure AI enablement activities meet enterprise standards for security, compliance, intellectual property protection, and responsible use
- Partner with CISO, Legal, and Compliance to maintain a risk management framework for AI that scales with adoption and adapts to evolving regulatory requirements
Vendor Strategy & Provider RelationshipsLead EPEO's strategic AI vendor relationships at the architecture and roadmap level:
- Engage leading AI and cloud platform providers as strategic partners - not just commercially but at the technical and roadmap level, influencing provider direction based on EPEO's scale and enterprise needs
- Maintain a forward-looking technology radar for AI: evaluate emerging models, agentic frameworks, and AI infrastructure patterns for enterprise applicability before they become mainstream
- Lead vendor capability assessments that go beyond marketing materials - forming independent, technically grounded views of where each provider's AI platform is heading and what it means for EPEO's business functions
- Manage the AI provider portfolio as a strategic asset: evaluate concentration risk, capability overlap, and investment sequencing across providers
Cross-Functional Platform PartnershipPartner closely with platform organizations across EPEO to ensure AI strategy translates into embedded, operating reality:
- Platform Engineering - align AI enablement priorities with core infrastructure and platform delivery roadmaps, ensuring AI capabilities are built into the platform layer, not bolted on
- Developer Experience - collaborate on how AI changes the way engineers build, test, and ship software across the enterprise, identifying where AI augments the inner and outer loop
- Employee Experience - partner on how AI-enabled platform capabilities reach and serve the broader workforce, extending value beyond engineering to all business functions
- Foundational Platform - work in close alignment on shared infrastructure, data, and runtime services that underpin AI workloads across EPEO's portfolio
- Digital Core Platforms - engage on how AI strategy intersects with the core systems and business platforms that power enterprise operations, ensuring AI enablement spans both modern and foundational technology layers
- Partner with Security, Legal, and Compliance to ensure AI adoption across all platform organizations meets enterprise risk, data handling, and regulatory standards
Executive Alignment & Strategic CommunicationBuild and maintain executive-level alignment on AI platform strategy and investment:
- Present well-formed AI strategy recommendations to senior and executive leadership - including business cases, opportunity cost of inaction, and multi-year investment prioritization
- Provide clear executive visibility into EPEO's AI platform health: adoption, governance posture, FinOps efficiency, and transformation progress
- Represent the AI platform strategy at internal leadership forums, external industry events, and in strategic vendor conversations
- Translate a fast-moving AI landscape into clear, actionable direction for the platform organization - synthesizing vendor signals, market developments, and internal data into decisions leadership can act on
How success is achieved...- Maintaining a current, rigorous, and independent view of how AI is positioned across EPEO's entire platform portfolio
- Identifying platform transformation opportunities ahead of the organization - forming views before consensus exists and bringing well-formed recommendations to leadership
- Driving AI enablement through influence, not authority - building trust and alignment across platform organizations that do not report directly into this role
- Translating complex AI developments into clear, enterprise-wide strategic direction that supports business functions and that leadership can act on with confidence
- Governing AI investments with the rigor of a FinOps discipline - not just tracking spend but connecting it to platform value and business outcomes
- Building and maintaining strategic vendor relationships that give EPEO early access to AI capabilities and influence over provider roadmaps
QualificationsYou'll have...AI Platform & Technical Expertise- 12+ years of experience in technology, including significant hands-on platform strategy, enterprise architecture, or AI infrastructure leadership
- Deep working knowledge of the enterprise AI provider landscape across leading cloud platforms, enterprise AI assistant and productivity platforms, and frontier AI model providers - able to evaluate technical capabilities and architectural fit, not just vendor positioning
- Demonstrated experience assessing and rationalizing AI portfolios at enterprise scale - you have looked across a large organization's AI landscape, identified what belongs and what doesn't, and made recommendations that were acted on across business functions
- Hands-on background in cloud platform architecture sufficient to evaluate AI capabilities at the architectural level - not just vendor positioning
- Experience designing or governing enterprise AI governance, FinOps, and enablement frameworks from the ground up - not inheriting and maintaining, but building and standing up
- Strong understanding of LLM architecture, agentic patterns, RAG, multi-model orchestration, and AI infrastructure primitives at enterprise scale
Leadership Profile- A strategically-oriented leader who combines technical credibility with the ability to drive organizational change through influence
- Comfortable operating at both extremes:
- Senior leadership strategy and investment discussions spanning technology, business functions, and enterprise priorities
- Deep technical and architectural conversations with platform engineering and vendor engineering teams
- Proven ability to operate with a long time horizon in an environment where the technology changes quarterly - holding a multi-year strategic view while remaining responsive to a rapidly evolving AI landscape
- Experience leading in large, matrixed engineering organizations (5,000+ engineers) where influence without direct authority is the primary mode of getting things done
- Genuine intellectual curiosity about the AI frontier - you follow research, engage vendors at the technical level, form independent views, and are rarely surprised by what ships
- Track record of managing strategic AI vendor relationships with hyperscalers and AI-native companies at the architecture and roadmap level
Enterprise Context- Experience in a Fortune 500 or large-scale enterprise environment with complex regulatory, compliance, and security requirements
- Demonstrated ability to build the business case for multi-million dollar AI platform investments and present to C-suite and board-level stakeholders
- Background in cloud platform engineering, enterprise architecture, or a CTO-adjacent strategy role strongly preferred - credibility in this role requires having built the platforms you are now strategizing about
You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've 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 builder...or 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 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.
This position is a leadership level 4.
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's 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: https://fordcareers.co/LL4Benefits
Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
