Ford CTO Ken Washington (left) is leaving the automaker for Amazon in July.
Ford
DETROIT – Ford Motor is shedding its main engineering officer to Amazon, marking an ongoing talent fight concerning the automotive and technologies industries.
Ford verified Thursday that CTO Ken Washington, who joined Ford from Lockheed Martin in 2014, will be leaving the Detroit automaker. powerful July 16. He will sign up for Amazon as vice president of software program engineering in Sunnyvale, California, in accordance to an inside employee memo furnished by Ford.
Washington’s departure is a key blow for the automaker, which is accelerating billions of bucks in new investments for connected, electric and autonomous automobiles underneath a new turnaround plan by CEO Jim Farley.
Jim Buczkowski — who has been dependable for investigate and layout of electrical and digital devices — will be getting on interim responsibility for Ford’s research and sophisticated engineering workforce though a long term successor for Washington is discovered, in accordance to the automaker.
Amazon did not immediately react for comment on the use, which was initial reported by the Detroit Free Push.
The automotive and technological know-how industries are progressively battling for expertise with the emergence of related vehicles and organizations from the two sides studying and creating autonomous vehicles. Automotive commence-up companies these kinds of as Lucid and Rivian also are vying for leading talent from both of those sectors.
Tech providers have been successful in modern decades. Ford missing two advertising and marketing executives to Google and Fb in 2020. Basic Motors last calendar year also dropped CFO Dhivya Suryadevara to electronic payments firm Stripe. Prior to that, Alicia Boler Davis — who led GM’s world manufacturing — left for Amazon.