Sr. Technical Program Manager

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

As a Senior Technical Program Manager, you will be responsible for organizing and executing program development tasks for cutting-edge technology.  This role provides opportunities to work with customers who are pioneers in the changing automotive footprint.  They are leaders in autonomous, EV, off-road and adventure markets. Within Harman and with the customer, you will work in a cross-functional role planning, communicating, team building, and executing a development plan to internal and external/customer requirements.

What You Will Do

• Manage several customer programs, requiring both applications and international development engineering. 

• Define tasks to be performed by a cross-functional team in developing systems. Use a task list to create a work breakdown structure.  Use work breakdown structure to establish a program schedule.

• Follow corporate product development (or applications) process. Ensure the compliance of team members.

• Ensure prompt decision-making is executed by promoting consensus decisions, intervening when consensus decision-making fails, and making unilateral decisions in the case of a deadlock.

• Understand all of the technical details of the products used in all systems, both electrical and mechanical.

• Approve requirements and technical solutions for meeting requirements for all development products.

• Establish and manage the program budget. 

• Work with Sales, Supplier Engineering, and Design Engineering to set system cost targets.  Meet system cost target.

• Set team goals for the timeliness, customer issues, and quality. Lead team to meet goals.

• Interact with all internal functions: design engineering, manufacturing, quality, purchasing, marketing, and sales.

• Negotiate resource allocations from functional managers. When a resource conflict occurs, negotiate a solution with functional managers and other program managers.

• Serve as lead program interface with the customer.

• Identify program issues as early as possible and drive resolution at the team level.  If resolutions require management intervention, escalate to appropriate management personnel with proposed alternatives.

• Review selected suppliers and quotes, and participate in supplier reviews/selection as appropriate.

• Coordinate and oversee the ordering of prototypes and production tooling.

• Audit task completion and report major deviations from the plan to appropriate management.

• Recommend continuous improvements development process.

• Support the RFQ process.

What You Need

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related field and 16 years of overall experience

• 8+ years related experience in program management, sales, quality, design, engineering management, process engineering, or manufacturing engineering

• Equivalent relevant industry experience will be considered

• Project Planning, problem-solving, multi-tasking, and project management skills

• Background in Automotive Electronics and Audio systems preferred.

What is Nice to Have

• PMP certification

• Master’s Degree in Engineering or MBA with 12 years overall experience

What Makes You Eligible

• Be willing to travel up to 10% domestic and international travel and occasionally travel to customer locations and Harman Plants.

• Be willing to work in the Novi, Michigan office

• Successfully complete a background investigation and drug screen as a condition of employment

What We Offer

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

• An inclusive and diverse work environment that fosters and encourages career development opportunities