HARMAN’s engineers and designers are creative, purposeful and agile. As part of this team, you’ll combine your technical expertise with innovative ideas to help drive cutting-edge solutions in the car, enterprise and connected ecosystem. Every day, you will push the boundaries of creative design, and HARMAN is committed to providing you with the opportunities, innovative technologies and resources to build a successful career.

A Career at HARMAN

As a technology leader that is rapidly on the move, HARMAN is filled with people who are focused on making life better. Innovation, inclusivity and teamwork are a part of our DNA. When you add that to the challenges we take on and solve together, you’ll discover that at HARMAN you can grow, make a difference and be proud of the work you do everyday.

About the Role

The Brand Experience team creates innovative meaningful consumer experiences to make a positive impact on people’s lives with products, services, and technologies.

This role will work closely with the Brand Owner, customer teams, and OEM customers to translate the brand experience vision into a technical vision, feature pipeline, and feasible technical path for both vehicle demonstrations, and ~80% asset reuse for production programs within the automotive environment. 

The role owns architectural vision, NFRs, and enablers; defines optimized architectures and early documentation; ensures technical feasibility and reuse; partners with the brand team to define and maintain the architectural runway.

It will serve as the primary technical interface and responsible party for technical concept development and approval, including hardware, software, systems, and features.  The role will work closely with the Brand Product Manager to evaluate feature ideas, synthesize detailed architectural and engineering requirements, and deliver these to the Brand Delivery Lead, to deliver brand experience demo vehicles and reusable feature assets. 

Your Team

This role reports to the Brand Owner and has no direct reports.

What You Will Do

Strategy & Leadership

• Translate the brand experience vision into a technical vision, feature ideas, and feasible technical path aligned with customer needs

• Define optimized architecture, feature concepts, and experience documentation (ERD early phases) for the Brand Experience Package; Define enabler features/stories

• Coordinate brand's technology strategy and roadmap with Lifestyle Division (NPI / NTI)

• Lead the determination of Technical Feasibility, risk eval & go/no-go analysis

• Investigate/evaluate new UI/UX/audio related technologies and best practices, tools, and methods for potential inclusion

• Synthesize detailed engineering requirements from the Brand Experience vision and user level requirements, for consumption by the Brand Delivery Manager and teams

• Engage with key OEM customer technical teams to align long-term architecture and implementation strategies.

• Act as technical subject matter expert and mentor, and train other Brand Technical Leads.

• Engages the broader innovation and project delivery teams to evaluate idea feasibility.

• Show fresh, insightful thinking by developing creative approaches to products & solutions, services, business models & strategies.

• Participate in ART-level events (PI Planning, System Demos, Inspect & Adapt).

• Ensure alignment with SAFe Lean-Agile principles.

• Collaborate with Release Train Engineer (RTE), Product Management, and Scrum Masters.

• Identifies enablers needed to realize features and experiences.

• Define and maintain architectural vision.

Customer & Stakeholder Engagement

• Engage with key OEM customer technical teams to align long-term architectural roadmap

• Collaborate with external partners & vendors to come up with creative solutions and drive best practices in technical development, to further augment and optimize the feature pipeline.

Delivery & Execution

• Identifies technical and non-functional requirements for inclusion in user stories.

• Enables the development team to build, Test, and deliver brand features with Project Teams, with market leading speed and quality

• Supports the development of demo cars integrating brand experience package and features

• Identify and develop innovative intellectual property based on new brand experiences, system designs, architectures, and concepts.

• Plan and extend the architectural runway during PI Planning.

Authorities

• Approves proposals during concept freeze and approval.

• Review and approve cross-brand asset architecture and design strategy

• Approve and continually refine standardized, cross-brand "definition of done" in agreement with project team

Accountabilities

• Concept freeze and approval (technical sections).

• Architectural definition, strategy, and runway

• Enabler definition at the system level

Success Measures (KPIs)

• Enabler throughput

• NFR compliance

• Reuse leverage (%?)

• Integration stability

• PI predictability and release scope adherence

What You Need

• Bachelor’s degree in Acoustical or Electrical Engineering

• 15+ years of combined brand, audio, product, and business-related experience.

• 5+ years in leadership, customer relationship management, and supplier relationships, preferably in automotive and/or luxury audio. 

• Must have significant architectural knowledge of automotive infotainment and audio systems.

• Must be able to articulate vision and influence decision making outcomes with internal stakeholders, external suppliers, and the customer.

• Must have a "whatever-it-takes" attitude using diplomatic leadership skills within a collaborative teamwork environment to accomplish the necessary results.

• In addition, having shown high involvement in research, technology development, and cutting-edge innovation.

• Experience working in the audio industry, technology industry, or automotive industry.

• Knowledge of features, strengths, and weaknesses of various software and hardware in the audio and computing realm

• Ability to communicate advanced and complex concepts and ideas persuasively and concisely to all levels of the business.

• Knowledge of acoustic theory, sound reproduction, and sound system tuning is a must

What is Nice to Have

• Master’s or PHD degree in Acoustical Engineering or Electrical Engineering

• Strong recommendations from automotive industry colleagues

• Automotive Business & Engineering Landscape Knowledge

• Luxury Audio Business & Engineering Landscape Knowledge

• Specific experience required in three or more of the following fields:  signal flow design, UI/UX design, electronics engineering, transducer engineering, acoustic engineering, digital signal processing, psychoacoustics, and recording arts.

• Passion for acoustics and sound reproduction

• Flexible in a challenging work environment

• Strong problem-solving skills

• Knowledge of recording arts/Musician

• Excellent presentation/communication skills

What Makes You Eligible

• Be willing to travel up to 25%, domestic and international travel

• Be willing to work in the Garching office

What We Offer

• HARMAN offers a diverse and inclusive work environment that fosters and encourages career development opportunities, professional training and competitive market base compensation

• You will also receive top-notch employee discounts on Harman’s Consumer Audio (JBL, AKG, HARMAN Kardon) and Samsung products

• Flexible work schedule with a culture encouraging work life integration and collaboration in a global friendly working atmosphere and good work-life-balance

• Attractive salary package

• Professional development opportunities through HARMAN University’s business and leadership academies which also includes extensive technical trainings

• Internal talent management leadership acceleration programs

• “Be Brilliant” employee recognition and rewards program

HARMAN is proud to be an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.