Sr. Manager, Future Computing Prototyping Studio
Description -
The Opportunity
HP is creating a Shanghai-based Future Computing Prototyping Studio to make the next generation of personal computing tangible on real HP hardware.
We are seeking a highly technical, entrepreneurial leader to build and manage this new organization. The Sr Manager will lead a multidisciplinary team spanning Linux, Android, virtualization, containers, hardware integration, AI developer tools, cloud services, UX design, and China ecosystem integration.
The studio will work at the intersection of product strategy, advanced engineering, hardware development, software platforms, silicon partnerships, ODM execution, and experience design. Its purpose is to move quickly from concept to a credible, executive-ready hardware demonstration—typically within four to twelve weeks.
The goal of the studio is not simply to create demonstrations. Prototypes will be used to validate customer value, technical feasibility, experience quality, partner readiness, and business potential. The strongest ideas should become HP products, software solutions, services, platform capabilities, or formal product-development programs.
As validated concepts move into productization, this role may expand to establish and manage the product and engineering teams responsible for bringing those concepts to market. The successful candidate must therefore be equally capable of leading early-stage experimentation and building durable organizations that can deliver commercial products and solutions.
This leader must be comfortable building an organization while simultaneously delivering its first prototypes. The role requires someone who can recruit exceptional technical talent, make sound architecture decisions, work directly with ODM engineering teams, establish a high-velocity development culture, and communicate complex technical opportunities clearly to senior HP leaders.
What the Team Will Build
The initial portfolio will concentrate on three major areas.
Linux Developer PCs on HP Hardware
The team will create differentiated Linux developer experiences for NVIDIA- and AMD-powered HP machines. These prototypes will combine reproducible Linux images, GPU and driver enablement, AI developer environments, containers, local model execution, modern development tools, hardware telemetry, and polished setup and recovery experiences.
Initial demonstrations will include:
- An HP Linux AI Developer PC for NVIDIA-powered systems, incorporating validated Linux and CUDA environments, containerized workloads, local AI inference, developer tools, GPU telemetry, and secure provisioning.
- An HP Linux Developer PC for AMD-powered systems, incorporating AMDGPU, Mesa, ROCm or other applicable acceleration paths, developer containers, graphics and media validation, local AI workloads, and power and suspend/resume optimization.
Android PC Hardware Bring-Up
The team will work with HP hardware groups, silicon partners, and ODMs to bring up Android or AOSP-derived software on PC-class devices.
The work will include:
- Android board-support package and hardware abstraction layer integration.
- Desktop Android shell, windowing, input, display, file-management, and productivity experiences.
- Android applications adapted to PC form factors.
- Hardware enablement across display, camera, audio, connectivity, sensors, power, thermal behavior, and suspend/resume.
- China application, cloud, AI, and software-distribution ecosystem integration.
Hypervisors, Containers, and Cloud-Managed Prototypes
The team will prototype secure combinations of Android, Linux, virtual machines, and containers using technologies such as KVM, pKVM, crosvm, QEMU, virtio, Android virtualization patterns, and Linux container runtimes.
The studio will also operate the cloud services required to provision, update, monitor, reset, and demonstrate prototype devices reliably.
Key Responsibilities
Build and Lead the Organization
- Establish the Shanghai Future Computing Prototyping Studio, including its operating model, engineering culture, technical standards, lab environment, partner cadence, and portfolio-management process.
- Recruit, hire, onboard, and develop the initial team
- Personally lead the selection and closing of the organization’s critical anchor hires, including Linux, Android, virtualization, hardware integration, AI, cloud, developer-experience, UX, and technical-program leaders.
- Partner closely with HP Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, compensation teams, universities, external search partners, and technical interviewers.
- Build a recruiting pipeline across experienced hires, open-source contributors, ODM and silicon-industry talent, new graduates, interns, contractors, and university research communities.
- Establish technical interview loops that assess systems thinking, open-source depth, hardware-debug capability, practical coding ability, architectural judgment, and the ability to create compelling prototypes.
- Create succession plans, technical career paths, mentoring practices, and an inclusive culture that attracts and retains exceptional engineers and designers.
- Establish additional product or engineering teams when validated prototypes advance into funded product and solution programs.
Own Technical and Product Direction
- Define the studio’s technical architecture and prototype roadmap in partnership with HP product, engineering, design, strategy, and business leaders.
- Translate broad future-computing concepts into bounded four-to-twelve-week prototype programs with real hardware targets and measurable acceptance criteria.
- Define the hypotheses each prototype is intended to test, including customer value, technical feasibility, performance, usability, ecosystem readiness, supportability, and commercial differentiation.
- Ensure that the team maintains credible technical depth across Linux, Android, AOSP, kernel and driver integration, GPU software, virtualization, containers, cloud infrastructure, and PC hardware.
- Balance rapid prototype development with reusable platform assets, sound security practices, clear documentation, and credible productization paths.
- Make informed build, buy, partner, upstream, productize, or discontinue decisions.
- Maintain a strong understanding of NVIDIA and AMD Linux developer stacks, Android platform architecture, hypervisor and container technologies, AI development workflows, and emerging PC software ecosystems.
- Ensure prototypes distinguish clearly between demonstrated capability, validated product potential, technical feasibility, and production readiness.
Validate Ideas and Convert Them into Products and Solutions
- Design prototypes around explicit customer, product, and business hypotheses rather than technology demonstrations alone.
- Establish validation plans using customer research, developer feedback, technical benchmarks, executive reviews, partner input, and limited pilots where appropriate.
- Determine whether each concept should be discontinued, refined, incorporated into an existing HP product, or advanced into a new product or solution program.
- Build concise investment cases for validated concepts, including intended customer, differentiated value, technical architecture, required resources, partner dependencies, risks, cost, schedule, and commercial opportunity.
- Create productization plans and transfer packages that allow receiving teams to continue the work without losing technical context or prototype learning.
- Work with HP product management, engineering, commercial, services, support, security, legal, and go-to-market organizations to establish the teams and operating model needed to bring validated concepts to market.
- Potentially assume broader management responsibility for these product and solution teams as they are formed.
Deliver Working Hardware Prototypes
- Deliver executive-quality prototypes on HP or approved near-target hardware rather than relying primarily on presentations or simulations.
- Lead the first prototype portfolio:
- HP Linux AI Developer PC — NVIDIA Edition.
- HP Linux Developer PC — AMD Edition.
- HP Android PC — Hypervisor/Container Edition.
- Establish a common prototype platform for device provisioning, telemetry, image management, cloud services, AI-service access, update, rollback, logging, and remote reset.
- Create clear demonstration narratives that connect technical capabilities to customer value, HP differentiation, partner strategy, and potential product roadmaps.
- Conduct regular live reviews with HP senior leadership, target users, developers, and ecosystem partners and convert feedback into rapid iteration.
- Prepare technical and product transfer packages for concepts selected for further investment.
Lead ODM and Ecosystem Execution
- Establish direct, high-frequency working relationships with ODM engineering organizations, silicon partners, component suppliers, cloud providers, and software ecosystem partners.
- Create a weekly ODM integration and blocker-resolution process with named owners, severity levels, next actions, and escalation paths.
- Coordinate hardware, BIOS, firmware, embedded-controller, BSP, driver, power, thermal, camera, audio, display, input, networking, and validation work across HP and partner teams.
- Ensure that external engineering partners are integrated into the studio’s operating rhythm rather than engaged only at final handoff.
- Build productive relationships with Chinese Android, Open Harmony, Linux, cloud, AI, and application ecosystem participants.
- Represent HP appropriately in open-source and technical communities and identify opportunities to contribute reusable work upstream.
Manage Portfolio, Budget, and Executive Communication
- Own the studio’s staffing plan, operating budget, hardware and cloud investments, external engineering spend, and resource allocation.
- Maintain a disciplined portfolio process in which each prototype has a sponsor, customer or user hypothesis, hardware target, technical owner, UX owner, validation plan, schedule, acceptance criteria, and explicit stop, iterate, transfer, or productize decision.
- Communicate progress, risks, architecture choices, hiring status, partner dependencies, validation results, and product implications to senior executives in concise business and technical terms.
- Escalate issues early and propose concrete choices rather than reporting problems without recommendations.
- Develop resource and organizational plans for concepts that are approved to become HP products or solutions.
- Build effective transitions from exploratory prototyping into accountable product development and delivery teams.
Education and Experience Required
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Typically 15 or more years of relevant engineering, product-development, or advanced-technology experience.
- Significant experience leading multidisciplinary software or systems-engineering organizations.
- Demonstrated success recruiting, hiring, and developing senior engineers, technical leads, designers, and early-career talent.
- Experience taking new concepts from prototype or incubation through validation and into product development or commercial delivery.
- Experience delivering complex software on real hardware through OEM, ODM, silicon-partner, or embedded-systems development models.
- Strong understanding of at least two of the following domains, with sufficient breadth to lead across all of them:
- Linux kernel, drivers, graphics, Wayland, Mesa, system services, and distribution engineering.
- NVIDIA CUDA or AMD ROCm and GPU-accelerated developer environments.
- Android/AOSP framework, SystemUI, window management, HALs, BSPs, and device bring-up.
- KVM, pKVM, crosvm, QEMU, virtio, Android virtualization, or container runtimes.
- PC BIOS, firmware, embedded controller, power, thermal, camera, audio, display, and peripheral integration.
- Cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, telemetry, device provisioning, security, and AI model services.
- Experience managing complex programs through ambiguity, incomplete platform support, and changing executive requirements.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building a new engineering team, innovation studio, incubation organization, or advanced-prototyping function from the ground up.
- Experience establishing product or engineering organizations to commercialize successful incubation projects.
- Experience working with PC, mobile, embedded, workstation, semiconductor, robotics, automotive, or cloud-device platforms.
- Direct experience with China-based ODMs, hardware suppliers, universities, or software ecosystems.
- Working proficiency in Mandarin Chinese or demonstrated ability to lead effectively through bilingual teams.
- Evidence of open-source participation or leadership in relevant Linux, Android, virtualization, container, graphics, or developer-tool communities.
- Experience conducting customer or developer validation for early-stage technical products.
- Experience creating prototypes and demonstrations for executive, customer, developer, or partner audiences.
- Experience transferring prototypes into production engineering and product-management organizations.
- Strong network within Shanghai and the broader China technical-talent market.This is an opportunity to build a new technical capability for HP in one of the world’s most important hardware and software ecosystems, validate new computing experiences on real devices, and potentially lead the organizations that turn the strongest ideas into differentiated HP products and solutions.
Disclaimer
• This job description describes the general nature and level of work performed in this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, skills, responsibilities, knowledge, etc. These may be subject to change and additional functions may be assigned as needed by management.
Job -
Software
Schedule -
Full time
Shift -
First Shift (China)
Travel -
Relocation -
Equal Opportunity Employer (EEO) -
HP, Inc. provides equal employment opportunity to all employees and prospective employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, sexual orientation, age, disability, or status as a protected veteran, marital status, familial status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic predisposition or carrier status, uniformed service status, political affiliation or any other characteristic protected by applicable national, federal, state, and local law(s).
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