Staff Controls Engineer, Coolant

Ford EV Digital Design teams are responsible for developing the key technologies and capabilities – such as EV platforms, batteries, e-motors, inverters, charging and recycling – to create ground-up breakthrough electric vehicles.   Join a team of knowledgeable and passionate engineers striving to build robust and safety-rated embedded systems to solve the most relevant problems in vehicle electrification. Being on the Ford EV D&D team means building the future as Ford’s center of innovation and growth through electric and connected vehicles and services. 

Thermal systems span a diverse range of critical customer-facing attributes, hardware, and software domains. For example, our work keeps occupants comfortable, enables full vehicle powertrain capability, and empowers battery fast charging – in all weather conditions. We strive to balance heating/cooling performance, energy consumption, cost, reliability, NVH, and packaging trade-offs through physics-driven, cross-functional engineering collaboration. We work closely with mechanical engineers, aerodynamicists, battery and powertrain experts, electrical engineers, embedded/controls engineers, and more through all phases of vehicle development. Your role: bridge the gap between what’s possible (models/simulation) and reality by building a world-class controls framework to deliver an exceptional customer experience in all situations that may arise. Your mastery of controls will balance many critical customer-facing performance attributes, e.g., vehicle range or efficiency, occupant comfort/climate control, NVH, and more.

• Create control/estimation algorithms to support a broad thermal management scope: climate control, battery, powertrain, heat pump/refrigeration system, car computers, and more.
• Deliver high-quality C code in a real-time embedded environment. 
• Write unit, SIL, and HIL test cases to ensure proper functionality. 
• Work closely with test and integration engineers to debug your control algorithms at the bench and vehicle level.
• Adapt or create reduced-order thermal systems models to suit control-focused development/refinement workflows.
• Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, and firmware engineers to execute control strategies.
• Develop fault detections and reaction strategies for seamless customer experience. 
• Develop and continuously improve models to compare alternative control algorithms quantitatively across many key metrics (cost, efficiency, performance, complexity, etc.)
• Monitor fleet telemetry and use data analysis to close the loop on software quality and help ideate new software features.

• Master’s degree in electrical engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or Computer Science, with evidence of exceptional ability, or equivalent
• 4+ years of experience in developing control algorithms and applying them to physical systems.
• High proficiency in programming experience using Python or Embedded C/C++
• Strong foundational background in control theory, system dynamics, and model-based design. 
• Highly collaborative mindset and strong communication skills
• Experience with JIRA/Confluence or a similar system for tracking inputs/results. 
• Hands-on experience in hardware bring-up, system debugging, and code optimization.
• Knowledge of electrical engineering fundamentals including circuit analysis and design

 

Preferred Qualifications.

• A strong understanding of linear systems, state-estimation/observers is a plus. 
• Familiarity with thermal control algorithms, and experience implementing it on an embedded system.
• Familiarity with refrigeration systems (compressors, heat exchangers, valves, sensors, charge and oil management) and HVAC systems.
• Experience with automotive communication protocols and stacks (CAN, LIN, ethernet, UDS, etc.)
• Knowledge of microcontroller peripherals such as ADC, GPIO, PWM, and SPI, and experience in sensors and digital signal processing 
• Experience with data management tools / using fleet data to guide design.
• Proficiency in C and C++ and scripting skills in at least one common language (Python, Perl, Shell)
• Experience developing control algorithms for thermal systems using modeling tools of various scales (Python, MATLAB/Simulink, or similar)

What you’ll receive in return: 
As part of the Ford family, you’ll enjoy excellent compensation and a comprehensive benefits package that includes generous PTO, retirement, savings and stock investment plans, incentive compensation and much more. You’ll also experience exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth and recognition.