Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering & AI Agent Enablement

Sonos Inc; Goleta (CA); On-site; USD 138,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance

401(k) plan with company matching

Open Time Off policy

12 paid holidays per year

Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance

Voluntary benefits

Mental health benefits

Employee discount and Sonos Radio HD

Job summary

Sonos Inc. is hiring a Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering & AI Agent Enablement to own the knowledge assets and autonomous service agents at the core of Sonos Care’s AI transformation.

You will lead two teams, shape the taxonomy and governance, and collaborate with engineering, data science, and external AI partners. The role requires 8+ years in knowledge or AI product management, 3+ years of leadership, and a strong PM background with stakeholder skills.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Business, or a related field.
• 8+ years in knowledge management or AI/product management.
• 3+ years of people leadership, ideally leading more than one function.
• Proven product owner or delivery-focused role with backlog responsibilities.
• Hands-on or leadership experience with autonomous or conversational AI in a customer support context.
• Strong background in taxonomies, metadata, information architecture, and knowledge representation.
• Understanding of ML pipelines and retrieval-augmented knowledge bases for agents.
• Familiarity with KCS methodology and applying it to technical support.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and executive presentation skills.
• Willingness to work from the office 5 days per week.

Responsibilities

• Own the product vision, roadmap, and backlog for Knowledge Engineering and AI Agent Enablement as a unified capability.
• Lead the Knowledge Engineering and AI Agent Enablement teams: hire, coach, and develop staff across both disciplines.
• Direct strategy for clean, AI-ready knowledge assets, taxonomy governance, and metadata standards.
• Own the roadmap for autonomous service agents, including prompts, tools, and grounding in knowledge systems.
• Establish agent evaluation and benchmarking with human review loops and escalation paths.
• Govern agent behavior with guardrails, brand tone, and compliance sign-off.
• Run agile planning, backlog refinement, and retros across teams with cross-functional partners.
• Define and report KPIs across both remits to drive data-informed improvements.
• Partner with Support, Data Science, Training, and leadership to prioritize investments.
• Establish governance, lifecycle processes, and compliance across functions.

Skills

Knowledge management

AI product management

People leadership

Product owner experience

Autonomous AI

Knowledge engineering

Machine learning pipelines

KCS methodology

Communication

Program management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Business, or related field

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Salesforce Service Cloud

Confluence

Vector search tools

Semantic search platforms

Agent orchestration (Salesforce Agentforce / Amazon Bedrock)

Job description

At Sonos we want to create the ultimate listening experience for our customers and know that it starts by listening to each other. As part of the Sonos team, you'll collaborate with people of all styles, skill sets, and backgrounds to realize our vision while fostering a community where everyone feels included and empowered to do the best work of their lives.

This is an on site position. Qualified applicants must live within commuting distance of our Santa Barbara, Seattle, or Boston office locations and should expect to be in office 5 days a week.

Visa Sponsorship: Sonos is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role at this time. We ask that applicants be authorized to work for us in country of role posting, both now and in the future.

Sonos is a leading technology hardware and software company dedicated to delivering innovative home audio experiences. Our Care organization powers customer success through deep technical expertise, and Knowledge and AI are our strategic advantage. We are building a modern, AI-enabled knowledge ecosystem and autonomous service agents that together accelerate resolution, empower agents and customers, and drive continuous improvement across our global support operations.

We are hiring a Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering & AI Agent Enablement to serve as product owner for two connected capabilities at the core of Sonos Care's AI transformation: the structured, machine-ready knowledge that autonomous agents and retrieval systems depend on, and the autonomous service agents themselves. This is a dual-remit people leadership role reporting to the Director, CX Product within the Care Enablement & Services organization.

What You'll Do

• Own the product vision, roadmap, and backlog for Knowledge Engineering and AI Agent Enablement as a unified capability, translating business and customer needs into clear, prioritized requirements for engineering, data science, and AI partner teams.
• Lead the Knowledge Engineering team and the AI Agent Enablement team: hire, coach, and develop managers and individual contributors across both disciplines, set goals, calibrate performance, and build career paths in two fast-evolving fields.
• Direct the strategy for making structured knowledge assets clean, well-modeled, and AI-ready, including taxonomy and ontology governance, metadata standards, data quality, and the retrieval layers (search, retrieval-augmented generation) that humans and agents draw on.
• Own the roadmap for autonomous service agents - which issues they resolve, how they elevate, and how they improve over time - overseeing conversation and prompt design, tool and API integrations, and grounding agents in structured knowledge systems.
• Establish agent evaluation and benchmarking practices covering accuracy, containment rate, safety, and quality, with human review loops and clear escalation paths to human agents.
• Govern agent behavior and risk: guardrails, hallucination controls, brand and tone consistency, and compliance sign-off before agents go live or expand scope.
• Run agile planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives across both teams, partnering with support engineering, data science, and external AI partners on underlying orchestration and infrastructure.
• Define, track, and report on KPIs across both remits - knowledge usage, content quality, agent containment, resolution accuracy, escalation rate, customer satisfaction, and combined effects on handle time and case deflection - and use data to drive continuous improvement.
• Partner with Support leadership, Diagnostic Engineering, Data Science, Training & Quality, and executive stakeholders to prioritize investment, close capability gaps, and present strategy and business impact to senior leadership.
• Establish governance frameworks, content and agent-behavior standards, lifecycle processes, and compliance requirements (accessibility, legal, brand, safety) across both functions.

What You'll Need

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Business, or a related field.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in knowledge management, AI or automation product management, or
• 3+ years of people leadership experience, ideally leading more than one function or discipline.
• Demonstrated experience as a product owner or in a delivery-focused product role, including backlog
• Hands‑on or leadership experience with autonomous or conversational AI agents in a customer support or service context, including agent design, orchestration, evaluation, or governance.
• Strong background in knowledge engineering fundamentals: taxonomies, metadata, information architecture, and knowledge representation - or demonstrated success leading engineers who work in these areas.
• Understanding of how machine learning pipelines consume structured knowledge, including retrieval-augmented generation knowledge bases and how agent quality depends on knowledge quality.
• Familiarity with KCS (Knowledge-Centered Service) methodology and its application in technical support Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and executive presentation skills, including the ability to translate technical and semantic decisions for non-technical audiences.
• Strong analytical, program management, and change management capabilities.
• Qualified applicants must be able to work from the office 5 days per week.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in a relevant field.
• Certifications in knowledge management (e.g., Certified Knowledge Manager), KCS, or AI/ML product disciplines.
• Experience in large-scale enterprise technology companies with high-volume technical support operations.
• Experience standing up or scaling an AI agent evaluation and benchmarking practice covering accuracy, safety, and containment.
• Familiarity with semantic web standards (SKOS, OWL, schema.org) and modern knowledge management or AI platforms such as Salesforce Service Cloud, Confluence, or vector and semantic search tools.
• Experience with agent orchestration platforms such as Salesforce Agentforce or Amazon Bedrock, or comparable tooling.
• Global or distributed team leadership experience and a track record of driving adoption of new processes and tools across multiple teams.
• Thought leadership contributions - writing, speaking, or community involvement - in knowledge management, KCS, or AI-enabled support practices.

Inclusion: Research shows that some candidates may not apply for roles if they don't meet all the criteria. If you don't have 100% of the skills listed, we still strongly encourage you to apply if interested.

Your profile will be reviewed and you'll hear from us once we have an update. At Sonos we take the time to hire right and appreciate your patience.

The base pay range for this role based off geographic location is:

$138,000 and $172,100

The specific pay offered will depend on the candidate's geographic location, as well as qualifications and experience. We apply geographic pay differentials based on the cost of labor in the market. Employees in high-cost locations may be compensated at the upper end of the range, while those in medium or low cost markets may be compensated at the lower end of the range. Your recruiter can provide more details about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that compensation details listed in US job postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

We also offer a comprehensive benefits program with choice and flexibility in mind to help support the health, wealth, and overall well-being of our employees. Regular full time employees in the US are eligible for benefits on day one, including:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• A 401(k) plan with company matching and immediate vesting
• An Open Time Off policy (OTO) so you have maximum opportunity to disconnect and recharge, with no tenure-based vacation accruals required
• 80 hours of sick time upon hire, refreshed annually
• Up to 12 paid holidays per calendar year
• Sonos offers a generous paid leave program for new parents or to care for a family member with a serious health condition, as well as short- and long-term disability for your own medical condition
• Company-paid Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance
• Voluntary benefits, including Voluntary Life, AD&D, Accident, and Pet Insurance
• Mental health benefits to support your holistic well-being
• A generous employee discount program & Sonos Radio HD - on us!

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company's sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Notice to U.S. Job Applicants: Sonos is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.

Sonos is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please send an e-mail to [e-mail] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.