Software Product Engineer (SPE) - Digital Cabin Experience · Ford Motor Company

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:15:25 GMT
Engineering

Ford Motor Company · Dearborn · $84,480-$162,120 · hybrid

The Software Product Engineer (SPE) is the feature delivery lead within the in-vehicle digital experience responsible for translating product and design intent into executable software backlogs in addition to driving SW delivery, middleware/services support, and vehicle integration.

This role has broad organisational influence across Product Management, Digital Product Design, engineering scrum teams, and testing to ensure feature readiness, integration quality, and release outcomes. The SPE is accountable for cross-team alignment, dependency and risk management, and integrated validation from concept through launch.

Key responsibilities include owning the end-to-end software delivery for a number of vehicle features sets within the digital cabin experience from concept through release sign-off, translating PRDs, design artifacts, and system requirements into epics and sprint-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria in Jira, and leading feasibility assessment, scope definition, and backlog readiness for PI planning.

The SPE will also drive cross-functional alignment with Product, Digital Product Design, Architecture, Engineering, and Test to ensure shared understanding of intent, priorities, and dependencies, define and manage feature dependencies and blockers across HMI, services, platform, and validation, and validate end-to-end feature behaviour on bench/vehicle through demos and product truth sessions.

Additionally, the SPE will lead defect triage and prioritisation for owned features, drive issues to closure through root-cause direction, retest strategy, and stakeholder communication, maintain clear execution visibility via epic status summaries, risk registers/mitigation plans, and regular stakeholder updates, and ensure test coverage alignment by reviewing/confirming that test cases map to story acceptance criteria and key edge cases.

The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of Human-Machine Interface (HMI) principles and product lifecycle management within embedded and automotive environments, including user experience considerations, system constraints, and customer-facing feature delivery.

They will also have 5+ years of delivering complex, cross-functional software features, including embedded in-vehicle application software that interfaces with downstream vehicle system layers, across automotive or adjacent domains, with demonstrated ownership spanning multiple teams and product releases.

A proven ability to author high-quality epics and user stories with clear scope, testable acceptance criteria, and dependency mapping, as well as strong experience driving Agile execution, including grooming, PI planning, and sprint delivery, is also essential.

The SPE will also need to have strong technical depth to effectively lead and partner with engineers, be comfortable participating in architecture discussions, defining interface contracts, and applying failure mode and risk-based thinking, and have experience leading defect triage using logs and traces, and driving disciplined prioritisation through resolution and closure.

Proficiency with Jira and Confluence, including creating traceability to requirements and design artifacts and managing cross-team dependencies, is also required.

Finally, the SPE will need to have strong cross-functional leadership skills with the ability to drive decisions, align diverse stakeholders, and communicate risks and status clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.