Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering & AI Agent Enablement

Sonos•Boston, MA

4d•$138,000 - $172,100•Onsite

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

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 escalate, 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.

Benefits

Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
A 401(k) plan with company matching and immediate vesting
An Open Time Off policy (OTO)
80 hours of sick time upon hire, refreshed annually
Up to 12 paid holidays per calendar year
Generous paid leave program for new parents or to care for a family member with a serious health condition
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
A generous employee discount program & Sonos Radio HD - on us!