Director, Hardware Engineering & Integration - ATP

Ford Motor Company · Dearborn

About Ford

Do you want to change the world? Ford Motor Company has endured and thrived for more than 120 years by reimagining how things are built. Today, Ford is leading a once-in-a-generation transformation in manufacturing: scaling EVs and integrating robotics, additive, AI vision, and digital platforms into one operating system, built on the Ford Production System (FPS) and its digital layer, FPS+.

Ford runs more than 19,700 robots across 56 plants worldwide. The next step is to make every new robot, vision cell, and printer faster and cheaper to bring on line, and to own the hardware that makes Ford's automation Ford's.

The Opportunity

ATP's robotics strategy is to own the bookends and buy the middle. Ford owns the top layer (the plant ontology, the safety envelope, test and certification, and data rights) and the tool end (end effectors, tooling, and task models). The robot body in the middle is bought and swappable. Between those bookends sits the hardware ATP designs and the integration work that gets every cell running in a plant.

Today that hardware lives with a few teams, and integration is split across controls, launch, and virtual commissioning groups, with much of it bought from outside integrators. Integration is now the largest share of what it costs to deploy a cobot. This role brings both together: one director who owns the hardware ATP designs and the method that integrates and commissions it, plant after plant.

The Position

As Director, Hardware Engineering & Integration, ATP, you will report to the ATP vertical leader for Forge, Print and Global Operations. You will:

Own engineering of ATP-owned hardware: end effectors and tooling, edge compute and enclosures, test cells for ATP's robot test and certification facility (RoboGym), and cable and wire-harness standards.
Own the integration and commissioning method: virtual commissioning, factory and site acceptance testing, controls integration, and the standard work that makes each deployment repeatable.
Lead ATP's integration and build team, a shared crew that installs and commissions robots, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and vision cells, and grow in-house capability that reduces reliance on outside integrators.
Own the device readiness standard that suppliers of robots, AMRs, printers, and vision systems must meet: drivers, manifests, data interfaces, and safety documentation.
Hand designs to TDM, Ford's prototype and manufacturing subsidiary, ready for manufacture so ATP hardware scales from prototype to production.
Partner with the Forge-X humanoid program lead, Core controls engineering, and the Forge, Sight, and Print verticals.

As Director, Hardware Engineering & Integration, ATP, you will report to the ATP vertical leader for Forge, Print and Global Operations. You will own engineering of ATP-owned hardware: end effectors and tooling, edge compute and enclosures, test cells for ATP's robot test and certification facility (RoboGym), and cable and wire-harness standards.

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