Data Product Manager

Job Description

About the Role

Ford's Global Data Insight & Analytics group is hiring a Data Product Manager to lead its data ingestion platform. Think of this platform as the front door for the company's data. It brings in structured and unstructured information, from live streams and scheduled batches, across a wide mix of sources, and gets it ready for the people who depend on it. As the product owner, you decide where the platform goes next and make sure it gets there.

This is a senior product position. Ford wants someone who has already shipped data products that people rely on, and who is comfortable sitting between data engineers, data scientists and business users. Your job is to translate what each group needs into something the team can actually build, then keep everyone pulling in the same direction.

What You'll Be Doing

• Setting the direction: Write and defend the vision, strategy and roadmap for the ingestion platform, backed by market research, competitor analysis and real conversations with users.
• Turning requests into priorities: Gather needs from teams across the company, weigh them against technical feasibility and available capacity, and decide what gets built first.
• Working side by side with engineering: Help shape new features and improvements, and put your thinking on paper through clear specifications, user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Launching with care: Plan and run the go-to-market approach for new capabilities and platform updates, so users know what changed and why it matters to them.
• Watching the numbers: Track platform performance and adoption, dig into usage data, and act on what it tells you.
• Staying close to users: Run interviews, surveys, usability tests and regular pulse checks so pain points get caught early instead of turning into escalations.
• Finding what's next: Use product discovery methods to spot and test new opportunities before committing engineering time.
• Keeping leaders in the loop: Present regular product updates and performance reviews to executives, engineering leads and business units in a way each audience can follow.

What You Bring

• A bachelor's degree, or a mix of education and hands-on experience that adds up to the same thing
• 5+ years in product management, with a clear focus on data products
• 3+ years defining and delivering product roadmaps
• 3+ years working in Agile development environments

Nice to Have

• A master's degree in computer science, engineering, business administration or a related field
• A solid grasp of data ingestion concepts, tooling and best practices
• Experience across structured, unstructured, real-time and batch data
• Familiarity with data visualization and analytics tools
• Hands-on time with cloud data platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud
• Strong presentation and interpersonal skills, paired with sharp analytical and problem-solving instincts

Work Setup and Location

This role is based in Dearborn, Michigan and follows a hybrid model with an expectation of four or more days on-site each week. Relocation assistance may be available for qualified candidates. Please note that Ford does not offer visa sponsorship for this position, and candidates must already be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Who Will Thrive Here

You'll likely enjoy this role if the behind-the-scenes plumbing of analytics excites you. The best fit is someone who can explain a pipeline to a director in the morning and debate schema decisions with an engineer in the afternoon. You are curious about how people actually use the tools you build, you back your decisions with evidence, and you stay calm when priorities compete. If you have led a data product through more than one release cycle and want a platform with real scale behind it, this is a role worth a close look.

Ford also says it welcomes applicants whose experience doesn't match every listed requirement, so if most of this sounds like you, it's worth applying.