Product Owner Audio Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Department: Product Management   

Reports to: Director of Product Management (Hardware)

Location: Scotts Valley, CA or Remote (United States)

We are hiring for a Senior Product Manager.  This is a dual-mandate role, and both halves are equally weighted. Roughly half your time is spent as the Product Owner of a dedicated Agile software team - you own its backlog, write its specifications, and are accountable for what it ships and when. The other half is spent as the Senior Product Manager for a line of professional audio interface hardware - you own the roadmap, the business case, and the launch.

These are not two jobs bolted together. The software team you run exists largely to support the hardware you define, so the person in this seat is the single point where hardware requirements become software commitments with real dates attached. We are looking for someone who is as comfortable ranking a sprint backlog and reproducing a driver bug on a nightly build as they are presenting a BOM cost trade-off to leadership.

We are open to candidates in the United States.  Candidates located in commutable distance to our HQ, Scotts Valley, CA are a plus.

Responsibilities

Product Owner for an Agile software team (~50%)

• Backlog and sprint ownership - You are the single accountable owner of one scrum team's backlog: you rank it, keep it groomed, and decide what enters a sprint. Ambiguous or under-specified work stops with you, not the engineers. You run the product side of two-week sprints - planning, mid-sprint review, refinement, demo - and partner with the Scrum Master and Engineering Manager on capacity and sprint goals that survive contact with parallel initiatives.
• Specifications and acceptance criteria - Translate hardware and business requirements into written software specifications detailed enough for an engineer to build from and QA to test against, decomposed into initiatives, epics, and sprint-ready stories. Every spec goes to the software architect and QA leads before development starts, and every story has agreed-upon acceptance criteria. This is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
• Software delivery schedules tied to hardware milestones - Given a hardware ship date, work with the Project Manager to determine what part of the software stack must deliver which functionality and by when, across application, driver, firmware, and DSP disciplines. Publish and defend feature-complete, beta, release-candidate, and release-to-marketing dates.
• Bug triage and release management - Own defect priority: write reproducible bug reports yourself, decide what blocks a beta or release, and make the go/no-go call with QA and engineering. Own the release plan and its artifacts - release notes, known-issues lists, compatibility test matrices, and documentation handoffs to Customer Care and Technical Publications.
• Prioritization and instrumentation - Maintain an explicit, defensible method (e.g. WSJF) for weighing stability, performance, tech debt, and customer-care-driven fixes against new feature work. Define the analytics events and reporting needed to know whether a feature is actually being adopted, act on what the data shows, and work with the Data team to keep that pipeline scalable for future releases.

Senior Product Manager, audio interface hardware (~50%)

• Product requirements - Author complete requirement sets spanning hardware, mechanical, electrical and audio specification, connectivity, driver support, software behavior, packaging, and documentation.
• Supply, lifecycle, and vendor management - Track component lifecycle and last-time-buy exposure, drive cost-down opportunities, and plan transitions before availability forces them. Manage the product relationship with silicon and driver vendors, technology partners, and contract manufacturers, including requirements, schedules, and license terms.
• Customer discovery and go-to-market - Run research with working professionals and enthusiasts, and own the activation and onboarding funnel - where new users get lost or disengage, and how you fix it. Partner with commercial, marketing, sales, and operations on SKU structure, pricing, bundling, launch readiness, channel and inventory planning, and EOL execution.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated Product Owner experience on a scrum team - not "worked with Agile teams," but personally owned a backlog, has written the stories, run the ceremonies, and been accountable for the release. Expect to be asked for specifics.
• Technical fluency sufficient to hold your own with systems engineers: operating-system-level device drivers, firmware, installers and software deployment, high-speed connectivity (USB, Thunderbolt, networked audio), and licensing or entitlement systems. You do not need to write the code; you do need to understand the trade-offs and ask the right questions.
• Hands-on by instinct - you install the nightly build, reproduce the bug, read the installer log, and run the test pass yourself when it matters. Candidates who manage exclusively through documents will not be successful here.
• Excellent written communication. Most of your output is written specifications, and their precision directly determines what gets built.
• Power-user command of Jira and Confluence (or close equivalents), including plans, filters, dashboards, and reporting.
• Proven ability to make decisions and hold a schedule in ambiguous, multi-stakeholder situations.
• Fluency in music production and audio recording - you are a musician, engineer, or producer, and you use this class of product yourself.
• Willingness to travel occasionally, including to trade shows and manufacturing partners.

Preferred

• Experience with a major platform or driver architecture migration and its long tail of installation and compatibility edge cases.
• Analytics instrumentation experience - defining event schemas and using product data to drive prioritization.
• Experience working with overseas contract manufacturers through DVT and mass production.
• Go-to-market, retail, or e-commerce experience.

Education and Experience

• 5+ years of product management experience shipping consumer or professional hardware and the software that drives it.
• Bachelor's Degree (or equivalent experience).

UA Salary Range of Pay:  $145,000 - $155,000

Base salary pay will be based on the cost of labor for the city/state in which the new hire resides, at the time of hire.

UA offers competitive benefits:  Profit sharing, Medical/Dental/Vision, 401K Safe Harbor Contribution, Stock Options, Flexible time-off (PTO/Sick Leave/Company Holiday Time-off), etc.

UA Mission:  We exist to thrill and inspire music makers everywhere with timeless sound and impeccable craftsmanship, freeing the songs inside and allowing you to sound like the records you love.

UA Vision:  In the future, music makers around the world will trust Universal Audio as a friend and creative partner, inspiring them to craft amazing records as naturally as playing their first instrument or singing their favorite song. The best home, project, and professional studios will feature most of the UA equipment from floor to ceiling - ranging from audio interfaces and guitar gear to microphones and software - all of it working together to deliver unrivaled sonics and operational symphony. Our customers will eagerly await each new UA product like a hit record or blockbuster movie, trusting that it may spark them to create the best music of their lives. In doing so, UA will become revered worldwide as the way that music is made.

Universal Audio is an equal employment opportunity employer. Our policy is not to discriminate against any applicant or employee based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law. UA also prohibits harassment of applicants or employees based on these protected categories.