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)
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
