Principal Engineer, Perceptual & Workflow Validation (m/f/d)

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 Principal Engineer, Perceptual & Workflow Validation, you serve as the authority for Sonic Trust and Workflow Trust within the Audio Performance & Integrity (API) Team.
You combine deep perceptual expertise with hands-on development engagement, acting as an embedded expert who guides feature maturation through structured alpha validation and professional audio judgment.

You influence complex projects across Domain and Cross Brand teams, ensuring that new technologies scale without compromising professional credibility.
You act as both methodological authority and experiential expert in the development process.

What You Will Do

• Act as the expert alpha validator embedded in development teams, providing high-impact, experience-based guidance throughout implementation

• Deliver detailed, actionable perceptual feedback that shapes feature behavior before formal certification

• Identify subtle system-level artifacts, parameter interaction issues, and workflow friction during early development

• Lead structured perceptual validation strategies across complex projects and release trains

• Design and oversee formal listening experiments, including controlled comparisons and statistically supported evaluations

• Interpret complex perceptual findings and drive resolution of systemic audio quality issues

• Define and evolve best practices for workflow integrity validation and perceptual certification

• Mentor team members and elevate perceptual validation capability within the team

• Collaborate with benchmarking and user research teams when broader statistical or panel-based evaluation is required

• Act as authority during final Anchor-stage validation and release readiness discussions

What You Need

• Extensive professional experience (10+ years) in audio engineering, tuning, mastering, or equivalent high-level domain

• Academic background with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Sound Engineering / Electrical Engineering / Signal Processing or equivalent

• Demonstrated ability to guide development teams through expert perceptual feedback during feature maturation

• Highly developed listening expertise with the ability to detect subtle artifacts and complex interaction effects

• Strong understanding of DSP behavior and its perceptual consequences

• Experience influencing cross-functional teams and driving resolution of complex quality issues

• Ability to balance innovation speed with professional integrity boundaries

• Excellent communication and negotiation skills in technically complex environments

What Is Nice to Have

• Experience conducting statistically rigorous listening studies

• Background in psychoacoustics or applied audio research

• Experience mentoring or leading technical specialists

• Experience working in automotive or embedded audio systems

• Exposure to benchmarking or large-scale listener panel methodologies

• Valid driver's license

• Proficiency in on site native language

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 environment with a culture encouraging work-life integration and collaboration in a global environment.

• Attractive salary package based on the Metall & Elektro Tarif Baden Wurttemberg and an Employer contribution towards a company pension plan

• 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.