Perceptual Audio Research Engineer — Metrics & Testing

Harman; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 134,250 - 196,900; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee discounts on Harman products

Harman University training

Wellness benefits

Tuition reimbursement

Be Brilliant recognition program

Job summary

HARMAN is seeking a Perceptual Audio Engineer (Research) in California to advance perceptual metrics, design listening studies, and build datasets that align with user perception. You will enable continual product improvement across DSP and ML components while maintaining rigorous validation.

The role emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, developing objective metrics, and ensuring no perceptual regressions through CI-style quality gates.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in EE/CS/Acoustics/Psychoacoustics/Statistics or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years in perceptual audio, audio quality evaluation, or related research/engineering.
• Experience with designing listening tests, perceptual metrics, and statistical analyses.

Responsibilities

• Develop perceptual metrics and evaluation methodologies that correlate with human judgments (timbre, artifacts, clarity, spatial realism).
• Design and conduct subjective evaluations (ABX, preference tests, rating studies) and perform statistical analyses.
• Develop ML-based quality prediction or artifact detection to speed iterations; support CI workflows.
• Define acceptance criteria and regression tests to prevent perceptual regressions in productization.
• Build and maintain clean datasets, labeling strategies, metadata, and experiment tracking.
• Collaborate with DSP, acoustics, ML, and system testing teams to reflect user value and edge cases.

Skills

Perceptual audio

Statistics for experiments

Python

MATLAB

ML frameworks familiarity

DSP concepts

Experiment design

Data analysis

Education

MS/PhD in EE/CS/Acoustics/Psychoacoustics/Statistics

Equivalent experience

Tools

Python

MATLAB

Job description

HARMAN is seeking a Perceptual Audio Engineer (Research) in California to advance perceptual metrics, design listening studies, and build datasets that align with user perception. You will enable continual product improvement across DSP and ML components while maintaining rigorous validation.

The role emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, developing objective metrics, and ensuring no perceptual regressions through CI-style quality gates.