DETROIT — Stellantis NV employees say training from the automaker's "academies," ranging from data and software to electrification, is accelerating their careers as the global auto industry undergoes a massive transformation.
The maker of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and other vehicles globally has hired more than 2,000 people in software and has more than 1,000 employees signed up to participate in the training to learn a new field or update their skills through the academies, Chief Software Officer Yves Bonnefont said. Stellantis has at least nine of them, partnering with the likes of Amazon.com Inc., Oakland University, Ohio State University, consultant firms and other suppliers to support the education that comes at no financial cost to employees.
"Basically, we're getting paid to go back to school," said Adam Goodes, a graduate of the data academy. "It just excelled everything that I was hoping for."
Adam Goodes is a graduate of Stellantis NV's data academy and now works as a data scientist.
The academies are part of an effort by Stellantis to ensure it has the tech talent it needs as automakers increasingly develop their own software and work to bring along existing employees in their transition to zero-emission, connected vehicles. Executives have emphasized the transatlantic automaker is taking a "one co" approach to the shift in contrast to rivals like Ford Motor Co. that has split itself between the traditional Ford Blue business and the Model e electric operations.
"We are in a challenging time of transformation in the industry where many important skills or roles are disappearing," said Anne Fenninger, head of the data and software academy, in a statement. "There is an intense and competitive search for talent in the market today. To support the overall transformation to a mobility tech company, Stellantis continues to evolve its workforce by offering opportunities to learn new skills outside their existing skillset or enhance current skills."
Still, like Ford and General Motors Co., Stellantis has made workforce reductions, announcing in April buyouts to 33,500 employees, including 2,500 U.S. white-collar workers.
"Every OEM and supplier is scrambling to try to hire people with software skills," said Sam Abuelsamid, principal e-mobility analyst at Guidehouse Inc. "That’s where all the growth is. They're laying off workers on internal combustion engine powertrains, and hiring software engineers. Recruiting software engineers is hard. If you can basically grow your own instead of hiring them away from tech companies, that might be advantageous to you. It's hard to attract people to come to Detroit from Silicon Valley."
By contrast, natives of the region know how the auto industry dominates southeast Michigan. Raised in Troy, Goodes' parents are both engineers, and while attending Michigan State University, he interned for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV before it merged with French automaker Groupe PSA to become Stellantis in 2021.
A mechanical engineer by education, Goodes, 25, now of Rochester Hills, had worked on prototypes on advanced projects several years prior to going to market before exploring what else was out there and becoming a data scientist.
Vehicles increasingly collect data on how customers use their vehicles. That information can be sent to the cloud where data scientists can take the information, analyze it to understand what features are being used and in what conditions, create predictive models and help make decisions about what features to include in future products. Stellantis has forecast that software-enabled product offerings and subscriptions will represent nearly $22 billion in annual revenue by 2030.
For Goodes, that means understanding when customers are using new features on the recently introduced Grand Wagoneer SUVs or how information from EVs in Europe might help with the launch of them in North America.
Adam Goodes is a graduate of Stellantis NV's data academy and now works as a data scientist.
"I'm really in the trenches with electrification," Goodes said. "They're honestly pretty different from the vehicles we've had in the past, and now that we're developing our own software for these vehicles, these are going to be some of the first vehicles that we have developed most of the software (for), so I'm happy to be a part of that."
Interested in earning a master's degree and knowing his strengths are in mathematics, he did some searches online to find computer programming listed among the "sexiest jobs" of the decade because of its work in machine learning, artificial intelligence and other buzzy technologies.
That led him to a master's degree in data science as he worked full time. After a few semesters, Stellantis began promoting its new data academy. Goodes jumped at the chance.
"It was a perfect setup for me because I was kind of struggling to see how am I going to transition to this side of things," he said about moving from an engineering job to a software role. "It's actually pretty different going from strictly engineering to software, computer programming, things like that. I was a little nervous about that."
The data academy eased the process. Goodes was one of its first participants. About a year ago, he entered the nine-week programming boot camp hosted by an outside company. It was a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. course five days a week that included live virtual lectures and projects.
Upon completion, Goodes was able to step right into an open data scientist role the following week in September. That was even before he completes his master's in data science this year.
Goodes added his engineering background also has been useful. To use the information collected, having knowledge of the vehicle architectures and the kind of signals the vehicle can transmit is needed.
"It's hard not to, when you have an opportunity, to go for it and pursue it," he said. "Learning it a second time really solidified the thing for me. The topics are actually aligned really well with a traditional school program versus the data academy."
Other parts of the academies are focused on upskilling workers with existing software experience. Minoo Monajjemi Nejad, 37, of Turin, Italy, stepped into a coaching role as a scrum master after working in software development for autonomous driving projects for nearly five years.
Minoo Monajjemi Nejad has stepped up her experience in software development through Stellantis NV's software academy to become a scrum master.
Today, the developers she coaches work with information focused on measuring the quality of products and ways in which to improve better results more frequently — a priority for Stellantis as it seeks to grow market share, reduce expenses and launch EVs. Unlike other developer roles, Nejad's teams also frequently communicate with stakeholders in other areas of the company.
"It's like giving the power to them to be able then to perform always better," she said. "When I shift(ed) my career and just chose this path, one thing that I wanted was making an impact because I want to see the impact of my work. I want to see that (in) 10 years, I've said that 'OK, I've been part of that change.'"
She expressed interest to her manager and human resources of moving into more of a mentor role with less emphasis on the technical side. That's how Nejad found out about the software academy.
Nejad was able to continue to work in her development job while preparing to transition into her scrum master role. Starting in May 2022, she had three 15- to 20-hour online virtual training courses with instructors from within and outside Stellantis to discuss theory and problem-solving to earn her certification. Then she shadowed scrum masters, or coaches, within the company to see what she learned in class in action.
It was about a month after starting when she stepped into the scrum master role herself. There are continuing education opportunities and coaching she also receives.
"I heard inside of me that I'm ready to give something to other new members that will come," she said, "know that I have the support and the community and all the tools necessary to take those steps."
If Nejad wanted to see the impact of her work, she says she has from helping employees embrace a new tool to remove impediments to the workflow to help teammates collaborate to accomplish a given task.
She recalled a new technique she shared to inspect the quality of the framework on which a team was working: "At the end of this event, they will say, 'Oh, that was great. Well, we enjoyed it a lot,'" she said. "You say, 'OK, I'm done. That made my day.'"
But when she proceeded to try the same technique with another team, the results were different.
"At the end of the event, they told me, 'No, we don't like this.'" she said. "And then I understood that, 'OK, when there's a human factor in between, you need to expect that, and that is something that I like because it helps me learn a lot."
She still employs knowledge from her studies in mechatronics engineering from her native Iran and in Italy as well as the early parts of her career in validation and software development. But Nejad says the academy has helped her grow professionally as well as personally, in addition to opening the door to an increasingly important role in Stellantis' historic transformation.
"Being in the scrum master is like 100% in my character because I love that human aspect," she said. "That is something that I enjoy doing a lot, even if it's challenging. And I see that when I look back, I see this has been the right move for me."
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