Sr Manager, Program Management

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

This position will be based in either Tokyo or Nagoya and will have significant customer-facing responsibilities. This role involves coordinating pursuit and execution activities within Harman, with the main objectives being:

• Gaining customer trust
• Presenting Harman to businesses pursuing our services
• Meeting and exceeding customer expectations in project execution.

Your Team

This position will report to the Director CPM RoJ and will be a part of the global CPM team to grow automotive business.
What You Will Do

• Build Customer Trust:
  • Demonstrate technical understanding of the product line.
  • Show knowledge of customer processes.
  • Enable Harman to meet and exceed customer expectations.

• Apply Technical and Product Management Knowledge:
  • Ensure commercial and technical proposals align with Harman business cases and customer expectations.

• Act as Technical Interface:
  • Communicate technical status, program progress, and product alignment with the OEM-customer.
  • Manage the transition from prototyping to production, including ramp-up.
  • Report to the customer and internally, including the management board.

• Support Program Realization:
  • Assist in the realization of the Intelligent cockpit program under the lead PM in India.
  • Steer international and cross-functional project teams with support from the lead PM, following J-OEM’s directions.
  • Deliver products according to agreed targets: schedule, budget, quality, with lead PM.
  • Perform top-level planning and controlling.
  • Align technical and commercial program targets with functional departments, especially J-OEM’s requests.
  • Control change management processes, including internal/external Change Control Boards.

• Execute Programs:
  • Follow HARMAN Project Life Cycle Management Processes (PLM / PMI PM Book).
  • Manage multiple customer programs requiring applications and international development engineering.

• Define and Manage Tasks:
  • Develop systems using a task list to create a work breakdown structure.
  • Establish a program schedule based on the work breakdown structure.
  • Set team goals for timeliness, customer issues, and quality.
  • Lead the team to meet these goals.
  • Collaborate with Sales, Supplier Engineering, and Design Engineering to set and meet system cost targets.

• Understand Technical Details:
  • Know the electrical and mechanical details of all products used in the systems.

• Serve as Local Lead-Program Interface:
  • Act as the primary interface with the customer.
  • Identify program issues early and drive resolution at the team level.
  • Escalate issues requiring management intervention with proposed alternatives.

• Audit and Report:
  • Audit task completion and report major deviations from the plan.
  • Recommend continuous improvements to the development process.

By following these steps, you will build customer trust through demonstrating technical understanding of the product line, knowing the customer process, and enabling Harman to meet and exceed customer expectations. You will apply your technical and product management knowledge to ensure commercial and technical proposals are always aligned with Harman business cases and customer expectations.

What You Need

• Minimum 15 years of JOEM product development and management experience in the automotive business.
• Minimum ten years of managing a multinational or multiregional engineering organization.
• Bachelor of science in engineering or other technical areas (or equivalent training / experience must be demonstrated)
• Business level Japanese and English proficiency
• Proven project management experience, with strong customer focus
• Ability to manage multifunctional teams in worldwide locations
• Working knowledge of program Management development tools (Doors, MS-Project, own HARMAN Tools like ProPer, Siemens TeamCenter, etc.)
• Fluent Japanese/English verbal and written communication skills

What is Nice to Have

• Diverse cultural experiences (multinational relocations, expat experiences, studying abroad, etc.)
• Multidisciplinary competency skills – software as well as EE and Systems, etc.
• Willingness to travel frequently of the time both domestic and international.

What Makes You Eligible

• Be willing to travel up to 10 weeks per year (overseas), weekly domestic (within Japan)
• Be willing to work with multiple time zones
• Successfully complete a background investigation/Aptitude Test as a condition of employment.

What We Offer

• We offer an authentic diverse, equal, and inclusive work environment that fosters and encourages professional and personal development in a truly global organization.
• You will work on products and services that touch people’s lives and will change the industrial standards, being a part of the transformations in our industry.
• Our work environments are fast paced, challenging, empowering, collaborative, flexible and exciting.
• We offer our own HARMAN University with regular updates on the new technologies and trends by utilizing various sessions organized by Self Learning and Development Trainings to help grow and advance talent.
• We offer competitive compensation/benefit programs and recognition programs.

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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.