Research Program Leader

About this role

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. 

Job Description

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 Bose’s core research portfolios. These programs will build on Bose’s 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 Bose’s 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 program’s 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

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