UX/UI Design Manager

About the Role At Harman Automotive, UX/UI Design Manager leads design activities across multiple automotive product areas and platforms for a key Japanese OEM partner, primarily on-site in Tokyo. The role spans Harman's automotive UX/UI design solutions, requiring hands-on leadership and close collaboration with OEM stakeholders, internal teams, and external partners to deliver usable, production-ready interfaces. What You'll Do

• Lead UX/UI design across diverse automotive programs and Harman product domains, adapting design solutions to OEM requirements, platform constraints, and project scope.
• Serve as the primary UX/UI design interface for the Japanese OEM, working extensively on-site, conducting design discussions, workshops, and reviews in Japanese.
• Own UX/UI direction across the full development lifecycle, from early vision and concept definition to series-production support and implementation alignment.
• Collaborate with software development, engineering, and product teams to ensure UX/UI concepts are technically feasible, clearly specified, and correctly implemented.
• Collaborate with global Harman teams (Japan, China, India), ensuring clear communication, transparency, and smooth cross-region handover.
• Provide clear, structured, and proactive design communication and status updates to customers and internal stakeholders, ensuring shared understanding of goals, progress, risks, and decisions.
• Lead, mentor, and support UX/UI designers by setting direction, reviewing work, providing feedback, and fostering collaboration across distributed teams.
• Create, review, and communicate UX/UI concepts, flows, wireframes, specifications, and high-fidelity designs using Figma as the primary design tool.
• Support and lead customer alignment through on-site visits, design workshops, joint reviews, and co-creation sessions.
• Coordinate and align with third-party partners, agencies, and suppliers where required, ensuring quality and alignment with Harman and OEM expectations.
• Drive usability, clarity, and experience quality by applying feedback from customer reviews, internal evaluations, and testing activities.
• Balance creative ambition with real-world automotive constraints, navigating trade-offs between UX quality, technical limitations, timelines, and customer requirements. What We're Looking For
• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in UX/UI Design, Interaction Design, Industrial Design, or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of professional UX/UI design experience, including leadership across complex digital or embedded systems; experience mentoring designers strongly preferred.
• Fluent Japanese (business-level) with strong understanding of Japanese corporate and OEM working culture.
• Fluent English (working level) for daily collaboration with global Harman teams.
• Proven experience working directly with Japanese OEMs in automotive or embedded environments.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end UX/UI work across varying scopes, user-centered design, and production-ready execution.
• Advanced proficiency in Figma for UX/UI design, collaboration, documentation, and stakeholder communication.
• Solid experience working closely with software development and engineering teams to align UX/UI intent with technical implementation.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to coordinate with customers and internal stakeholders.
• Experience working with distributed and international teams (US, China, India).
• Strong soft skills, including stakeholder management, cultural sensitivity, structured problem-solving, and calm leadership in complex environments. Nice to Have
• Experience across multiple Harman automotive divisions or product areas.
• Hands-on experience leading on-site OEM design workshops and joint alignment sessions in Japan.
• Exposure to motion design, system behavior, or time-based UX in automotive contexts.
• Familiarity with Unity or real-time visualization for concept, prototype, or future UX work.
• Experience coordinating work with external agencies or suppliers in an automotive environment.
• Interest in modern UX workflows, design efficiency, a Compensation & Benefits
• Not disclosed in the posting.