Executive Director, Account Management Lead

About the Role

As Executive Director, Account Management Lead, you will lead a team of high‑performing account leaders with their teams and be responsible for ensuring long‑term commercial success and customer satisfaction for the whole portfolio of customer projects. You will actively contribute to overall customer business strategy and maintain high‑level customer relationships with insights into the customer’s product/platform roadmap.

Your Team

This position leads leaders with Account Management team managers supporting all Strategic Business Units (SBU) projects and Harman automotive products for a German OEM with >1.5bn average yearly revenue within the 5-year period. The role will have approximately 12 direct reports.

What You Will Do

• Develop and maintain the customer account strategy and be the primary contact from Harman to capture and propagate the strategic and commercial voice of customer for a select portfolio of customer projects.
• Oversee commercial and legal agreements and customer negotiations for awarded business.
• Closely track customer satisfaction at senior levels, and provide strategies for course corrections when needed.
• Ownership of commercial targets (revenue, EBIT, Cash Flow) for your portfolio of customer programs.
• Own continuity of awarded business (extensions, follow‑ons, CRs) with a view on continued lifetime profitability of your portfolio.
• Develop and maintain a relationship map, including status of relationship, goals and actions to get to desired state.
• Execute HR cycle activities including hiring, performance management, succession planning, coaching, and development.

What You Need

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or in Business Management.
• 10+ years of related sales experience with at least 5 years in Automotive.
• 5+ years leading an Account Management organization along with customer interfacing and cultivating customer relationships.
• Must have a thorough understanding of German Automotive OEM’s organization and processes.
• Thorough understanding of P&L statements, business cases and quotes/contracts with automotive OEMs.
• Technical understanding of Automotive HW and SW systems.

What Is Nice To Have

• Master’s degree in Engineering or Business Management.
• Experience working with the applicable customer/OEM.
• Experience working with Automotive ecosystem including different Tier levels and 3rd party suppliers.
• Work experience at Tier 1 supplier of products such as audio, infotainment, connectivity, and ADAS.

What Makes You Eligible

• Be willing to travel up to 30%, domestic and international travel.
• Be willing to work in an office in Garching or Karlsbad Hybrid.

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, etc.).
• Extensive training opportunities through our own HARMAN University.
• Competitive wellness benefits.
• Tuition Reimbursement.
• An inclusive and diverse work environment that fosters and encourages professional and personal development.

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. (