Principal Product Manager, Roon

Description & Requirements

Introduction: A Career at HARMAN Lifestyle

We’re a global, multi-disciplinary team that’s putting the innovative power of technology to work and transforming tomorrow. As a member of HARMAN Lifestyle, you connect consumers with the power of superior sound.

• Contribute your talents to high-end, esteemed brands like JBL, Roon, Mark Levinson, Revel, Denon, and Bowers & Wilkins

• Unite your passion for audio innovation with high-tech product development

• Create pitch-perfect, cutting-edge technology that elevates the listening experience

About the Role

At Roon, we are at the forefront of revolutionizing the way people experience music. Since our inception, we have dedicated ourselves to developing software that transforms music streaming into an immersive journey, tailored specifically to the listener's preferences and unique tastes.

Under the umbrella of Harman International, Roon continues to operate with the spirit of a nimble startup, backed by the resources and reach of a global powerhouse. Our team comprises passionate individuals who believe in the power of music to connect and inspire. We are developers, designers, engineers, and audiophiles united by a common goal — to make listening to music more engaging, personal, and connected.

This is the most senior product role on Roon, and it is a hands-on one. You will set the direction the product takes, and then do the work that gets it there: the research, the strategy, the feature definition, the prototypes. You will have engineers and a designer to build with, and no support function to hand the thinking to.

What You Will Do

• Own product strategy: Define who Roon is for and what we do better than anyone else for them.

• Grow the audience: Determine who the serious listener of the next decade is, how they discover and consume music, and what Roon has to become to belong in their setup. Do this without losing the listeners who pay for Roon today.

• Represent the listener: Maintain an accurate picture of who our users are and what they need, drawing on direct conversations, community forums, support tickets, reviews, and product data.

• Define the feature set: Translate strategy into a specific set of features with a clear rationale for each, and decide what gets built, what gets cut, and what we will not take on.

• Own the roadmap: Sequence the work across multiple quarters, keep it current, and build the implementation plan with engineering, in specifications clear enough for the team to start work.

• Build the measurement practice: Instrument what matters, define the metrics that decide whether a feature worked, and move Roon from gut to evidence.

• Prototype your own ideas: Build working, interactive prototypes yourself with AI tooling, close to our design language, and bring them to the team as the starting point for an idea.

• Hold the quality bar: Have and defend opinions on interaction, information density, defaults, naming, and how the product feels to use, working with design as a peer.

• Investigate our codebase: Use AI coding tools to establish how Roon behaves today, including business rules, constraints, and edge cases, before specifying changes.

• Build your own tooling: Create the research pipelines, internal tools, automations, and evaluation harnesses you need to work effectively.

What You Need to Be Successful

• Experience: 10+ years in product management, including having owned the strategy for a whole product or business rather than a feature area. You have done your own research rather than commissioning it, launched something new, and stayed with a mature product long enough to live with your earlier decisions. Founders and early-stage operators who have worked at this altitude without the title are welcome to apply.

• A personal connection to music: A serious, long-standing involvement with music, as a collector, musician, producer, DJ, critic, or simply someone who has spent years listening closely. Roon is built for people who care which recording, which pressing, and who played on it, and we have found that people without that connection struggle to judge what this product should be. You do not need to be an audiophile or a current Roon user.

• Product taste and direction: A clear sense of what good looks like, the ability to say where the product should go, and the judgment to choose between competing versions of something and explain the reasoning.

• Building with AI: AI is already part of your daily work, from research synthesis through to prototyping and the tooling you build for yourself. You have taken ideas to working prototypes with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, or v0, and can show the work. You validate what these tools produce and know when not to use them.

• Ownership: Comfortable committing to a position with incomplete information and defending it to engineering, design, and senior leadership. Works with limited guidance in a small, remote, self-managing team.

• Communication skills: You can write for a public community of expert users who will scrutinize everything we say, and for senior leadership, and be persuasive to both.

• Measurement: You have built this practice somewhere it did not exist, not only operated one that did. You decide what success looks like before anything gets built, and you can get to the answer yourself by querying product data in SQL or equivalent, running an experiment, and reading the result honestly. Familiar with subscription metrics such as trial-to-paid conversion, retention, churn, and lifetime value.

• Technical fluency: Enough technical grounding to pick up how our systems work and why the constraints exist, so you can judge what a decision makes easy, expensive, or impossible. Engineers will explain the details; you need to absorb them and design accordingly. A deeper engineering background is a plus, not a requirement.

Bonus Points If You Have

• Something you built and shipped on your own, outside of a team — a side project, a tool, a small product — that people other than you actually used.

• Experience in music, audio, media, or another category serving enthusiast users across both hardware and software.

• Experience with subscription businesses, or with hardware and software sold together.

• Experience with a product that has a vocal, publicly organized user community.

• You have built something on the Roon API, or you are a Roon user with opinions.

What Makes You Eligible

• Willingness to travel up to 5%, domestically and internationally.

• Able to work virtually in any US time zone.

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

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, and more).

• Extensive training opportunities through our own HARMAN University.

• Competitive wellness benefits.

• Tuition reimbursement.

• "Be Brilliant" employee recognition and rewards program.

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

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Pay Transparency

$ 134,250 - $ 196,900

Dependent on the position offered, other forms of compensation are also available, such as bonuses or commission.

Pay is based on a wide range of factors, including, without limitation, skill set, experience, training, location, and business need. While the above range is a reasonable estimate of the wage range for this position, please note the disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographical differential associated with the location where the position may be filled.

Benefits

HARMAN is interested in the health and wellbeing of you and your family and offers a range of benefits designed to support your needs for holistic wellbeing. Benefits and perks may vary depending on the nature of your employment with HARMAN, and may include paid vacation and holidays, paid sick leave, volunteer leave, and paid bonding and care giver leave. Employees may also be eligible to participate in comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, fertility support and adoption assistance, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan with employer match, short and long term disability coverage, life insurance, and more.

About HARMAN: Where Innovation Unleashes Next-Level Technology 

Ever since the 1920s, we’ve been amplifying the sense of sound. Today, that legacy endures, with integrated technology platforms that make the world smarter, safer, and more connected.  

Across automotive, lifestyle, and digital transformation solutions, we create innovative technologies that turn ordinary moments into extraordinary experiences. Our renowned automotive and lifestyle solutions can be found everywhere, from the music we play in our cars and homes to venues that feature today’s most sought-after performers, while our digital transformation solutions serve humanity by addressing the world’s ever-evolving needs and demands. Marketing our award-winning portfolio under 16 iconic brands, such as JBL, Mark Levinson, and Revel, we set ourselves apart by exceeding the highest engineering and design standards for our customers, our partners and each other. 

If you’re ready to innovate and do work that makes a lasting impact, join our talent community today!

Important Notice: Recruitment Scams

Please be aware that HARMAN recruiters will always communicate with you from an '@harman.com', ‘@careers.harman.com’ or ‘@harmanglobal.avature.net’ email address. We will never ask for payments, banking, credit card, personal financial information or access to your LinkedIn/email account during the screening, interview, or recruitment process. If you are asked for such information or receive communication from an email address not ending in one of the above email domains about a job with HARMAN, please cease communication immediately and report the incident to us through: View email address on jobsearch.harman.com.

You Belong Here 

HARMAN is committed to making every employee feel welcomed, valued, and empowered. No matter what role you play, we encourage you to share your ideas, voice your distinct perspective, and bring your whole self with you – all within a support-minded culture that celebrates what makes each of us unique. We also recognize that learning is a lifelong pursuit and want you to flourish. We proudly offer added opportunities for training, development, and continuing education, further empowering you to live the career you want.  

HARMAN is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. HARMAN strives to hire the best qualified candidates and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse marketplaces and communities of our global colleagues and customers.  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. HARMAN attracts, hires, and develops employees based on merit, qualifications and job-related performance.() 

HARMAN is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process, please contact us at  View email address on jobsearch.harman.com . Requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with applicable law.