Student Worker Program – Vehicle Access System Engineering

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?

Join our Advanced EV Development (ADVEV) team for a 6-month Student Worker Program and help build the future of mobility! Immerse yourself in Ford's center of innovation and growth, working alongside top engineering, design, and software talent to create groundbreaking EVs and contribute to key technologies like batteries, charging, and recycling. This is your chance to gain hands-on experience and make a real impact on the automotive industry.

The ADVEV Systems Engineering designs and coordinates distributed functionality across the vehicle’s software and hardware. You’ll collaborate with product owners, software developers, and validation teams to bring complex features to life. Systems engineers are architects, documentarians, and requirements authors who define system structures, write requirements, create test cases, and guide debugging. They’re strong coordinators and communicators, translating customer needs into actionable plans and aligning work across disciplines. As modern electrical architectures distribute software across the vehicle, we depend on system engineers to help us deliver reliably delightful experiences. 

This is a 6-month program

Role overview

This student worker role is focused on improving how our system engineering documentation is created, kept current, and consumed across teams.Your mission will be to build lightweight, practical “documentation generation” and “documentation verification” tools that reduce manual effort and help teams quickly find accurate, up-to-date system information—primarily by deriving documentation from existing sources of truth. You’ll work closely with a systems engineering mentor to define a scoped project, iterate with real users, and deliver something that can be adopted by engineers.

This is a great fit for someone who enjoys turning messy real-world information into clear, navigable views (static sites, diagrams, reports) and who is motivated to make tools that others actually use.

What you’ll do...

• Build a documentation generator that produces consistent artifacts from existing engineering sources  

• Prototype and implement auto-generated system views such as:

 – System/block diagrams derived from interface inputs/outputs and component relationships

 – A static HTML documentation site that lets engineers browse the latest interfaces and related metadata

• Create a repeatable pipeline for generating documentation (e.g., runnable locally and/or in CI) with clear instructions for use and contribution

• Integrate navigation and “traceability-style” links where feasible (for example, linking interface documentation to related Jira/Jama items or other references)

• Build verification/auditing utilities that detect inconsistencies in design artifacts and documentation

• Talk with systems engineers to understand how they search for system info today, then adjust the tooling to match how they work

• Document your work clearly: how the tool works, how to run it, how to extend it, and what conventions teams should follow going forward

• Present a demo and recommended next steps at the end of the program 

You’ll have...

Required / strongly preferred

• Currently pursuing a BS or MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Data Science, or similar

• Comfort writing code in at least one general-purpose language used for tooling (e.g., Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar)

• Experience with Git and GitHub workflows (branches, pull requests, code reviews)

• Interest in developer tooling, automation, documentation systems, and/or data visualization

• Ability to take an ambiguous problem, propose a plan, and iterate independently while communicating progress and risks

• Clear written communication skills—your output will be used by engineers who were not involved in building the tool

 

Nice to have (not required)

• Familiarity with static site generation concepts (Markdown pipelines, docs-as-code, search indexing, etc.)

• Experience parsing and transforming structured text formats (JSON/YAML/XML/IDLs), building CLIs, or writing code generators

• Familiarity with UML/PlantUML, diagram generation, Graphviz, or similar

• Exposure to requirements or work-tracking tools (Jama, Jira) and/or “traceability” concepts

• Interest in human-centered design for engineering tools: usability, information architecture, and adoption 

Why this matters

Ford builds complex distributed systems. When d