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Ford chief technology officer Ken Washington leaves automaker to join Amazon

Ford Chief Technology Officer Ken Washington is leaving the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker to take a job with Amazon, the Free Press has learned.

"Ken and Ford announced his plans to employees on Monday," said Ford spokesman T.R. Reid. "This interim transition is well planned. Ken will be taking a role as vice president of software engineering at Amazon in Sunnyvale, Calif."

Amazon is notoriously discreet about its hiring and hasn't put out any news releases. Washington still lists Ford on his LinkedIn.

"Washington will end his tenure at Ford on July 16, with Jim Buczkowski, a longtime Ford colleague and Senior Henry Ford Technical Fellow, taking on interim responsibility for the company’s Research and Advanced Engineering team while a permanent successor for Washington is identified," said a staff memo excerpt provided by Reid.

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Ken Washington, chief technology officer at Ford, is working to coordinate safety protocols amid the pandemic.
Ken Washington, chief technology officer at Ford, is working to coordinate safety protocols amid the pandemic.

The current CTO responsibilities include Ford’s next generation vehicle electrical architectures; sensing and computing stacks; energy, propulsion, and sustainability; advanced materials and manufacturing; and controls and automated systems, the Ford website said. "He also leads Ford’s STEM and University research programs."

Maintaining and growing those relationships are essential, Reid told the Free Press.

Having impact

Washington has been CTO since June 2017, where he leads Ford’s worldwide research organization, and oversees the development and implementation of Ford’s technology strategy and plans. He works with advanced engineers in Michigan, Silicon Valley, Germany, China, and Israel, according to his LinkedIn professional biography.

He was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020.

"My path was not linear. It was very indirect. And if you had asked me 30 years ago, would I end up as the CTO of Ford Motor Company, I would have thought you were crazy," Washington said during a March 2 discussion hosted by the Franklin Institute science museum and education center in Philadelphia.

"I always wanted to do work that's important and had a significance to society, things with meaning. And I wanted to work on things that were technically challenging and interesting. And I wanted to work around really great people," he said.

Ford checked those boxes when Ford came recruiting, he said. "I knew I was going to learn something. I knew it was important work to do. The auto industry was going through a transformation and I wanted to be a part of that."

Washington has been serving on the University of Michigan Engineering Leadership Advisory Board, according to the school website.

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“An important part of Ford+ is willingness and effectiveness in partnering with others for expertise, and Ken’s been on the leading edge of that within the company,” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's chief product platform and operations officer, in the staff memo. “He’s had a tremendous influence in building out our capabilities and learning from others in ways that are making Ford a leader in connected vehicles.”

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Washington started at Ford in August 2014 as vice president of research and advanced engineering. He oversaw development of technology strategy and plans for vehicles and mobility services, LinkedIn said. Ford's autonomous vehicle advanced engineering effort and Ford's mobility research program both began under his leadership, he said on LinkedIn.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped coordinate employee safety protocols.

Ford has announced a series of changes since CEO Jim Farley took the helm on Oct. 1:

Farley has said during investor calls that recruiting top tech talent is a high priority.

Ford has hired 600 software engineers this year alone to total more than 7,000 software engineers in the U.S. and Canada working on design, architecture, data, testing and other technical and infrastructure roles.

But someone with Washington's impressive credentials may be difficult to find.

From space to cars to computing

Before joining Ford, Washington worked as vice president of the Advanced Technology Center at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, where he led a team of scientists and engineers in research and development.

Washington had been the first chief privacy officer at Lockheed Martin Corp., where he built the company’s privacy program, set the privacy strategy direction and established a team of privacy professionals to execute the strategy. Washington also previously served as the vice president and chief technology officer for the Lockheed Martin internal IT organization.

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Prior to joining Lockheed Martin in February 2007, Washington served as chief information officer for Sandia National Laboratories. He has a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University and is a fellow of the MIT Seminar XXI program on International Relations.

Follow Phoebe Wall Howard on Twitter @phoebesaid.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ford tech exec Ken Washington joins Amazon