Director, Cloud & AI Infrastructure Operations

Overview

At Ford, you’ll work on ideas that matter, alongside passionate people who want to make a global impact. Together, we’re shaping the next era of transportation—grounded in purpose, driven by progress. Make your move.

• Job Type: Full time
• Work Type: Remote

We made history and now we work to transform the future – for our customers, our communities and our families. You’ll see your work on the road every day, helping people move freely and pursue their dreams. At Ford, you can build more than vehicles. Come build what matters.

The Ford Motor Credit Company team helps put people behind the wheels of great Ford and Lincoln vehicles. By partnering with dealerships, we provide financing, personalized service and professional expertise to thousands of dealers and millions of customers in over one hundred countries around the world.

In this position…

The Director, Cloud & AI Infrastructure Operations will be a senior technical leader responsible for the reliability, security, and cost-efficiency of Ford Credit’s cloud and container-based application landscape, with a growing focus on AI infrastructure and secure AI enablement. This individual will operate at the intersection of cloud engineering, platform operations, cybersecurity, and emerging AI technologies — partnering closely with application teams, enterprise architecture, cloud platform teams, security engineering, and external technology partners.

Ford Credit’s technology estate is increasingly hybrid — spanning Google Cloud Platform, containerized platforms (Kubernetes/OpenShift), traditional Ford data centers, and a rapidly growing footprint of AI-driven capabilities (LLMs, RAG pipelines, agentic automation). This Director will own the operational health, security posture, and cost efficiency of that hybrid estate, while also building Ford Credit’s capability to safely and effectively adopt AI infrastructure and AI-assisted engineering tools. The role is both a hands-on technical leadership position and a strategic partner to the VP, translating emerging cloud/AI capabilities into governed, production-ready, cost-conscious solutions.

What you’ll do…

Cloud & Container Operations

• Provide operational leadership and support for applications running on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and on container operating systems such as Kubernetes and/or OpenShift.
• Maintain and evolve deep working knowledge of GCP services, GCP networking constructs, and secure architecture patterns; guide teams in designing and implementing secure solutions within GCP.
• Lead the design and implementation of High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) infrastructure for applications spanning Google Cloud and Ford data centers, ensuring resiliency across hybrid environments.

AI Infrastructure & Innovation

• Build and apply familiarity with AI infrastructure concepts — including Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Agentic AI solutions — to design and execute solutions that improve IT processes and drive automation.
• Develop working knowledge of AI-powered IDEs (e.g., Cursor, Claude) and promote their effective, secure use within engineering teams to boost developer productivity.
• Gain and apply working knowledge of Google AI services (e.g., Gemini Enterprise, AI Runtime, Vertex AI Search, Feature Store) to design and execute secure, production-grade AI solutions.
• Partner with security engineering to identify, evaluate, and implement security controls and solutions that protect AI architectures and AI agents from emerging threats.

Security & Compliance

• Maintain working knowledge of application and infrastructure security scanning tooling — including SAST, SCA, IaC scanning, DAST, and API security testing — and ensure these are embedded into cloud and container delivery pipelines.
• Ensure all cloud, container, and AI solutions adhere to Ford Credit and enterprise security, risk, and compliance standards.

Cost & Value Management

• Proactively identify and implement solutions to reduce infrastructure costs and AI token/consumption costs.
• Develop and present metrics and dashboards to management demonstrating the operational, financial, and productivity benefits of implemented solutions.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Collaborate extensively across internal Ford Credit teams (application, infrastructure, security, architecture) as well as external part…