Marc Whitten. Courtesy Sonos Marc Whitten, the chief product officer of Sonos, will be leaving the company, a spokesperson told Tech Insider.

Whitten has been at Sonos for the last two years. He oversaw the release both of the PLAY: 5, the new flagship speaker, as well as TruPlay, the speaker tuning smartphone app.

Whitten's departure comes as Sonos restructures the company. Sonos has been a longtime leader in the connected speaker market, but has recently found itself facing more competitors, like the Echo, the voice-activated speaker/personal assistant from Amazon.

Earlier this month, Sonos announced that it would lay off some of its employees. The company, which is privately held, wouldn't say how many people it let go, but John MacFarlane, Sonos' CEO, wrote in a blog post that Sonos would continue to build speakers but focus on two areas — streaming music and voice control.

MacFarlane even called out Amazon's Echo by name in his blog post.

"Voice recognition isn’t new; today it’s nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google, and Cortana," MacFarlane wrote. "But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather, and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform."

"Alexa/Echo is the first product to really showcase the power of voice control in the home. Its popularity with consumers will accelerate innovation across the entire industry. What is novel today will become standard tomorrow. Here again, Sonos is taking the long view in how best to bring voice-enabled music experiences into the home. Voice is a big change for us, so we’ll invest what’s required to bring it to market in a wonderful way."

The Sonos PLAY: 5. Sonos

Whitten came to Sonos after spending most of his career at Microsoft. Before Sonos, he was the chief product officer of Xbox. He worked on Xbox for 14 years, though worked at Microsoft before that.

For now, Sonos won't actively look for someone to fill Whitten's role, meaning the company will be without a product leader as it looks to shakeup its product lineup. However, a company spokesperson told Tech Insider that the remaining team will continue to grow.