Executive Director, Brand Owner, Car Audio

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 Car Audio Brand Experience Team designs innovative Branded Audio consumer experiences that positively impact lives through advanced products and technologies. This role leads the brand experience vision, develops customer relationships, and manages cross-functional teams to deliver brand experience product bundles with customer partners. Key responsibilities include:

• Leading cross-functional teams to create production-ready experience packages, combining hardware, software, and consumer-focused features, and presenting them as brand and customer proposals.

• Delivering reusable assets for production integration and validation in automotive environments, ensuring speed and quality.

This position acts as the primary technical and business interface for stakeholders worldwide and collaborates with consumer and professional divisions to align technologies and roadmaps. It is critical for expanding the brand experience portfolio across assigned brands and customers.

Your Team

You will report to the Brand Experience VP and have 5-7 direct reports, including: Regional Brand Manager, Brand Architect, Project manager, Android Lead, Brand UX Lead, and Product Owner.

What You Will Do

Strategy & Leadership

• Build and lead Brand Experience Strategy.

• Manage a small, nimble, powerful direct brand experience team, plus larger supporting matrix teams.

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

• Coordinate the brand's portfolio strategy and positioning with Consumer and Pro Divisions

• Lead the determination of Commercial/Strategic/Technical Feasibility - Lead PLM Lite Process – risk eval & go/no-go analysis

• Align internal delivery planning with OEM facing customer roadmaps

• Collaborate with other Brand Owners, adjacent stakeholders, internal teams, external partners & vendors to come up with new UI/UX and audio related technologies and best practices.

• Evaluate new ideas coming out of innovation pipeline for potential brand experience inclusion

Customer & Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as Brand Ambassador and “CEO” to Lead the brand experience vision, development, customer relationship, business model, and direct plus cross-functional teams to define, match, and deliver compelling brand experience product bundles with customer partners

• Serve as single point of contact for Customer Account Management Team for the brand – Support the jointly developed customer engagement strategy on pursuits

• Represent & Promote brand and experience both internally and at the customer - build relationships, support tech day events, present brand and customer proposals

• Signoff on production proposals during PLM200 concept freeze and approval

• Overseas Brand Confirmation validation for production vehicles with branded systems

Delivery & Execution

• Manage overall team that builds, tests, and delivers Brand Features to Project Teams, with market leading speed and quality

• Assign business value to objectives during PI Planning. Approves Sprint and Release scope what/when)

• Oversee the creation of internal documentation for holistic brand experience and/or OEM adaptations through Brand Experience concept freeze and approval (PDM)

• Drive development of demo cars integrating brand experience package and features

Authorities

• Approve production proposals during concept freeze and approval.

• Decide inclusion of new ideas and concepts into roadmap

• Determine delivery plan & roadmap and OEM facing customer roadmaps

Accountabilities

• Brand Experience Strategy

• Concept freeze and approval (business sections).

• Achievement of business goals / outcomes / pursuit success

• Ensure on-time deliveries with project team

Success Measures (KPIs)

• PI predictability and release scope adherence

• Feature acceptance rate

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Direct feedback on user satisfaction.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend.

• Roadmap hit rate

• Net earnings – both value and trend

What You Need

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related demonstrated technical expertise

• 20+ 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.

• A mature approach toward leadership and soft skills: building trust and long-term internal team relationships to influence consistent, positive outcomes.

• Functional audio architecture knowledge of automotive infotainment and audio systems.

• Demonstrated acumen in business case development, program management, make/buy, commercial, and product bundling/sales strategy, feature ideation, and consumer validation.

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

• Experience leading a team to drive time critical projects to completion.

What is Nice to Have

• A combination of Engineering and Business Degrees (eg. Ba ENG + MBA)

• Strong recommendations from automotive industry colleagues

• Automotive Business & Engineering Landscape Knowledge

• Passion for the power of brand as a unifying concept for bundles of experience products

• Passion for acoustics and sound reproduction

What Makes You Eligible

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

• Be willing to work in a Office (Hybrid)

What We Offer

• Flexible work environment, allowing for full-time remote work globally for positions that can be performed outside a HARMAN or customer location

• Access to employee discounts on world-class Harman and Samsung products (JBL, HARMAN Kardon, AKG, etc.)

• Extensive training opportunities through our own HARMAN University

• Competitive wellness benefits

• Tuition Reimbursement

• Access to HARMAN Campus Fitness Center and Cafeteria

• An inclusive and diverse work environment that fosters and encourages professional and personal development

#LI-RV1 #LI-Hybrid

HARMAN is proud to be an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard torace, 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.