Research Program Leader

At Bose Corporation we believe sound is the most powerful force on earth and for over 60 years we have been a company built on innovation excellence and independence. Privately owned fiercely customer-focused and driven by our values we continue to lead industries and transform lives through sound.

Today Bose Corporation is entering an exciting new era. Across multiple global Business Units and Global Functions we are shaping the future of audio technology automotive luxury and premium experiences. We invite you to join us in this transformation.

Research Program Leader

Role Summary

Research Program Leaders are senior scientific and technical leaders responsible for the long-term direction health and output of one of Boses core research portfolios. These programs will build on Boses foundation in sound and audio and extend them toward systems at the intelligent edge.

Bose Research is organizing around durable capability domains in perceptual intelligence environmental adaptation and sensing distributed edge orchestration and trusted intelligent systems. These domains will serve as the long-horizon scientific engines that power future technologies platforms products middleware and new businesses.

In this model the Research Program Leaders sit at the intersection of deep technical research systems strategy team formation and business relevance. They partner closely with research leadership corporate strategy and engineering teams to ensure that long-horizon science creates durable capability platforms.

This search is not simply for a leader to execute a predefined agenda. It is also an invitation to propose what Bose should pursue next. We are looking for visionary hands-on leaders who can articulate a compelling research thesis shape it into an ambitious and focused program assemble and align a multidisciplinary team and carry the work from foundational research through prototypes demonstrations and pathways to meaningful product and business impact. Candidates should be prepared to describe not only what they have led in the past but also the opportunity they believe Bose should pursue why it matters where Bose can create a distinctive advantage and how they would build and execute the program.

We are particularly interested in research programs spanning three interconnected areas: multimodal human perception including the creation of perceptually coherent scenes and interactions across sound vision touch motion and context; intelligent environments that sense people and adapt to their needs in useful intuitive and trustworthy ways; and distributed architectures that intelligently place computation across wearable devices nearby or local resources and the cloud to optimize responsiveness energy use capability privacy resilience and overall experience. The strongest proposals may connect these domains and establish a durable new technical franchise for Bose.

This role begins with sound and audio as Boses foundation but it does not stop there. Each leader is expected to help build outward from audio into multimodal distributed and trusted systems at the intelligent edge.

This role is responsible for:
defining and evolving the research program vision boundaries and 10-year science arcs
attracting developing and leading a world-class research team and network of external partners
shaping 12 to 36-month research programs that generate deployable models datasets evaluation frameworks APIs and foundational IP
ensuring franchise work connects sound and audio use cases to broader intelligent edge system opportunities
mapping research outputs into products platform capabilities middleware licensable IP strategic pilots and future venture opportunities

Research Domains
We expect research programs will anchor in one of these domains but every role is expected to think across the full Bose Research stack.

Research Franchise:

Perceptual Intelligence Systems-Perceptual models and decision logic that make adaptive experiences feel human stable and personalized across devices and environments.
Environmental Adaptation & Sensing Systems-Model room cabin motion listener and contextual state in real time so systems can infer and adapt to the physical world.
Distributed Edge Orchestration-Coordinate inference rendering and adaptation across devices networks and compute tiers so experiences remain coherent and efficient.
Trusted & Intelligent Systems-Create privacy-first personalization trustworthy adaptation policy control and secure data architectures for intelligent edge systems.

Key Responsibilities
Research Vision and Scientific Leadership
Define and maintain the long-term scientific vision mission and driving research questions for their research program
Establish and evolve decade-scale science arcs that begin with sound and audio where appropriate and expand deliberately toward multimodal distributed and intelligent edge systems.
Operate research programs to produce durable defensible capability layers rather than isolated technical breakthroughs or opportunistic projects.
Set the scientific quality bar for the programs foundational assets including models datasets evaluation frameworks reference implementations and core intellectual property.
Represent the research team in executive-level discussions and recommend long-range technical direction major bets and scientific tradeoffs.

Team Building and Attracting Talent
Recruit attract and retain outstanding researchers engineers and collaborators who can raise the technical ambition and execution quality of the research team.
Build a high-performing team culture that combines scientific depth systems thinking disciplined exploration and practical translation.
Mentor senior technical contributors help identify future program leads and create an environment where top researchers want to do their best work.
Develop external academic and advanced technology partnerships to strengthen Boses access to frontier ideas and talent.
Program Formation and Portfolio Leadership
Translate long-arc scientific questions into 1236 month programs with clear hypotheses milestones output expectations and funding decision gates.
Work with the Program Portfolio function in corporate strategy to launch review redirect or stop programs based on scientific learning platform leverage and strategic fit.
Ensure programs produce deployable artifacts such as reusable primitives APIs evaluation harnesses datasets and reference models rather than stand-alone demos.
Balance exploration foundational asset creation and near-term offramps without allowing the research to become feature-driven or fragmented.

Cross-Franchise Systems Alignment
Partner with the peer Research Leads to align work across perception sensing orchestration trust rendering and efficient edge deployment.
Ensure work can plug into shared system architectures spanning devices environments networks and ecosystems.
Prevent scientific duplication and research fragmentation through shared roadmaps technical interfaces and evaluation language across the lab.

Research Translation to Enterprise Value
Partner with strategy engineering and business stakeholders to map research outputs into products platform modules middleware licensable IP strategic pilots and venture opportunities.
Partner with Commercialization team to define technology deployment paths through consumer products engineered systems software/middleware and foundational IP.
Advocate for research investment based on long-term strategic leverage and system position not only on short-term feature demand.

External Scientific Leadership
Represent Bose in collaborations with universities research institutes national labs standards groups and advanced technology partners relevant to the franchise domain.
Strengthen Boses external reputation as a serious long-horizon research organization by contributing visible scientific leadership and thought partnership in external technical communities.
Maintain awareness of emerging technical ecosystem and policy developments that may affect research direction or timing.

Qualifications
12 years of experience in advanced research applied science or deep technology development in one or more relevant domains such as computational perception auditory neuroscience AI/ML sensing systems signal processing robotics distributed systems privacy/security trustworthy AI or edge computing.
Demonstrated ability to define and lead long-term technical or scientific agendas under uncertainty.
Demonstrated record of attracting building or leading high-caliber research teams labs or multidisciplinary technical groups.
Strong systems thinking capabilities and comfort operating across multiple technical disciplines and abstraction layers.
Track record of translating research into platform capabilities deployable technology foundational IP or durable technical assets.
Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence research engineering strategy product and executive stakeholders.
Experience collaborating with academic institutions research labs or advanced technology ecosystems.

Preferred Qualifications
Experience working in leading research organizations such as corporate research labs advanced technology groups national labs frontier technology startups or top-tier academic labs.
Recognized thought leadership in a domain relevant to one of the four Bose Research franchises demonstrated through scientific impact patents open-source contributions standards activity or other field-shaping work.
Experience leading work that starts in audio acoustics or human perception and expands into broader intelligent systems multimodal environments or edge platforms.
Experience with low-power edge deployment resource-constrained inference distributed systems or privacy-first adaptive systems.
Advanced degree (PhD or equivalent experience) in engineering computer science applied science neuroscience or a related field.
Strong external research and recruiting network across academia or advanced technology ecosystems.

Early Measures of Success
Success in this role will be measured by the scientific clarity team quality architectural value and long-term impact of the program learning not just by near-term feature output.

Within the first 12 months Research Program Leads will:
define and document a clear research mission boundaries and 10-year science arcs
build the research team and talent plan with key recruiting priorities capability gaps and partnership targets clearly defined
launch multiple projects so the research program reflects the intended science thesis
establish a roadmap for foundational assets including models datasets evaluation harnesses interfaces and reference implementations
align with strategy engineering and research leadership on an off-ramp roadmap for the programs most promising outputs
Enable at least one research capability to show a credible path into a deployable primitive platform layer or strategic pilot

At Bose youre inspired to be and do your best and are rewarded for your unique talents! Our compensation is thoughtfully tailored to your skills experience education and location and goes beyond base salary. The hiring range for this position in the primary work location of Framingham Massachusetts is: $271100-$ hiring range for other Bose work locations may vary. In addition to competitive base pay we offer rewards including bonus programs comprehensive health and welfare benefits a 401(k) plan plus exclusive perks designed to support your wellbeing and a generous employee discount where you can immerse yourself in our products and experiences. We are a proudly independent companydriven by purpose guided by our values and united by a belief in the power of sound. As the world leader in audio experiences were creating whats nextpushing boundaries and delivering transformative sound experiences for people everywhere. Join us and make your next career move a mic-drop. Lets Make Waves.