Director of Engineering - Digital Products in Essex

We’re looking for a hands‑on, transformative engineering leader to own digital products & originations for Ford Credit Europe. As the Director of Engineering for Digital Products & Originations, you will oversee the digital products that power our customer‑facing Originations and dealer experiences across Europe. Managing an engineering organization of 50+ across the UK, Germany, Spain, and India, you will bridge the gap between traditional banking rigour and fintech agility. This isn’t just about maintaining systems; it’s about creating the future of how millions of customers interact with Ford.

Responsibilities

• Organizational Leadership & Strategy

• Build the Team: Directly manage and mentor a group of Engineering Managers and Staff Engineers. You are responsible for the organizational design, hiring strategy, and career progression of a 50+ person engineering team.
• Culture of Excellence: Instil a culture of technical craftsmanship. Shift the mindset from “project thinking” to "product / customer thinking", ensuring teams take long‑term ownership of their code, quality, and technical debt.
• Resource Management: Manage the engineering budget and headcount distribution, with a value driven mindset, ensuring talent is deployed against the highest impact business priorities.

• Modernize the Core: Drive the architectural strategy for decoupling and modernizing our digital products. You will oversee the transition from legacy systems to event‑driven, cloud‑native applications deployed on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Reliability & Scale: Ensure our platforms remain robust, secure, performant, and capable of 24/7 availability in a highly regulated environment.
• Engineering Craftsmanship: Own and enforce the software engineering standards (the "building codes") for your domain. This includes code quality, testing practices, branching strategy, code review processes, and CI/CD configuration. You are accountable for the how of building high‑quality, maintainable software.
• AI: Adopt and drive agentic AI to accelerate the SDLC and improve quality.

• Bridge the Gap: Act as a technical partner to the Business Operations, Risk, and Finance leadership. You will translate complex technical constraints into business options and vice versa.
• Global Alignment: Collaborate with your counterparts in the US to ensure our European platforms integrate seamlessly with Ford’s global ecosystem, while maintaining local market relevance.

Qualifications

• Leadership Experience

• Engineering Leadership: 10+ years in software engineering, with at least 5+ years in a senior leadership role (e.g., Head of Engineering, Director, or Senior Manager) managing other managers.
• Scale: Experience leading organizations of significant size (30+ engineers), including navigating the complexities of hiring, performance management, and organizational restructuring.
• Domain Expertise: Demonstrable experience building both "power user" systems like our dealer‑facing UIs, as well as easy‑access UIs for end‑customers.

• Cloud Native: While you may not code everyday, you have a deep architectural understanding of modern cloud platforms (GCP preferred), microservices, and event‑driven architectures, and can hold your own in a design review with a Staff Engineer, able to challenge effectively on design choices.
• React Frontends: 5+ years of experience building React applications.
• Java Backends: A background in the Java & Spring ecosystem, using GraphQL, REST and Kafka for integration.

• You will work with your teams to continuously improve skills, knowledge and best practices.

• Talent Magnet: You have a history of attracting top engineering talent and building diverse, high performing teams.
• Technical Leadership: You provide inspirational tech direction to engineers, knowing what good looks like.
• Communication: You can relate complicated technical problems in a clear and jargon‑free way, demystifying the tech for the executive team.

Bonus Points For

• Experience with finance platforms (e.g., off‑the‑shelf banking software or custom‑built ledgers).
• Google Cloud Professional Architect certification.
• Experience building vehicle finance and dealer application.

Equal Opportunity Statement

The Company is committed to diversity and equality of opportunity for all and is opposed to any form of less favourable treatment or harassment on the grounds of race, religion or belief, sex, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.

Location and Work Arrangement

This position is based in Dunton, and it is expected the successful candidate will be able to attend the Dunton Campus for typically 4 days a week and remain flexible on the days they are required to attend the office according to business requirements.

Pre‑Employment Screening

As part of our pre‑employment checks process, successful candidates will be required to undergo a criminal record check. This will be conducted in line with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and applied only to unspent convictions.