Release Train Engineer

at  Ford Motor Company

We are the movers of the world and the makers of the future. We get up every day, roll up our sleeves and build a better world - together. At Ford, we’re all a part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to change the way the world moves?
Enterprise Technology plays a critical part in shaping the future of mobility. If you’re looking for the chance to leverage advanced technology to redefine the transportation landscape, enhance the customer experience and improve people’s lives, this is the opportunity for you. Join us and challenge your IT expertise and analytical skills to help create vehicles that are as smart as you are.
The Central Delivery Office of the Enterprise Platform Engineering & Operations Team is a dynamic team whose mission is to manage and mature our SAFe Transformation, communications, training, DEI/culture and organizational change. The team is responsible for guiding the SAFe transformation of the teams, which includes ~ 2000 team members, working on platforms such as: Google Cloud Platform, Application Hosting, High Performance Computing, Networking, and Employee Experience. The team is also focused on introducing and implementing the service to platform transformation, and managing projects such as Azure B2C launch, E-Commerce Platform Reliability, and China Data Center Optimization. Our role on these projects is to support tech and architecture design, map out necessary systems and dependencies, and own the responsibility for ensuring the necessary service teams are able to deliver.

IN THIS POSITION…

The Central Delivery Office is looking for a Release Train Engineer to support the first Agile Release Trains and the SAFe Transformation in the Enterprise Platform Engineering & Operations Department. The Release Train Engineer (RTE) will focus on supporting and coaching an Agile Release Train (ART) by steering it to success and navigating the complexity of delivering software in large, cross-functional environments. The RTE would help resolve and escalate impediments, manages risk, helps assure value delivery, and drives ART level continuous improvement. The RTE will be accountable for the overall planning, coordination, execution, and delivery of value through the planning interval.
This is a hybrid-work opportunity in Dearborn, MI.

• Working with the Platforms team who prioritizes the features to be considered in the next planning interval (PI) planning cycle.
• Facilitating the ART team’s refinement of features to be considered in the next PI planning cycle to meet the Feature Definition of Ready.
• Assists the ART in communication and coordination with stakeholders and customers during feature definition and delivery.
• Ensuring effective communication and coordination for the planning interval
• Managing change to the ART’s PI plan and the impacts of those changes.
• Drive cross team, ART, and departmental impediments, planning, collaboration, and coordination.
• Provide regular and open communication across the ART and stakeholders for transparency and awareness of progress and impediments.
• Understand, visualize, and manage upstream/downstream dependencies.
• Drive delivery and continuous improvement by utilizing feedback and metrics (quality, delivery rate, etc.) to identify areas of opportunity.
• Enables decentralized decision making and helps the ART to continuously improve through team empowerment.
• Create visibility to the overall cost, schedule, and performance of the ART.
• Analyze ART budgets and estimates from participating organizations to provide direction for the overall development of all budgets and integrated cost profiles.
• Manage ART level coordination, such as creating timelines, milestones, and cadence of increments and releases and oversee the development of reports and analyses that document ART activity.
• Lead project teams and provide and leadership; act as consultant/coach to management in resolving unusually difficult problems.
• Participate with management and cross-functional teams as subject matter expert to develop and improve operating policies and procedures related to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and be an advocate in adopting Agile and SAFe best practices and processes.
• Act as a galvanizing force for sharing Agile and SAFe knowledge across the organization.
• Constantly refine and stay current with emerging themes in larger Agile community.
• Support the configuration of SAFe to the needs of the organization, standardizing and documenting practices.