{"id":32323,"url":"https://alion.io/job/on-head-of-engineering","title":"Head of Engineering","company":{"id":720276,"name":"On","domain":"on.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/on-6","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":71,"open_postings":35,"ghost_share":0.4,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":69,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Shanghai, China"],"countries":["CN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":67000,"max_usd":151000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":4188},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-14T03:06:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-04","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T00:15:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":295,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":294},"description":"In Short:\nWe are establishing a Global Technology Center in China to serve as a strategic R&D and innovation center for next-generation retail and commercial platforms.\nAs Head of Engineering, you will be responsible for building, leading, and scaling this hub, owning the end-to-end engineering strategy, execution, and talent agenda.\nThis role combines deep technical leadership, organizational building, and global stakeholder management. You will operate at the intersection of China’s highly advanced retail ecosystem and our global technology platform, delivering software products that power markets across the globe.\nYou will report into global technology leadership and act as a key member of the Global Engineering Leadership Team. Your entrepreneurial and result-driven mindset, combined with strong hands-on technical oversight and execution skills, will make you a key member of the core team on which On’s future is built.\nYour Mission:\nYour mission is to build a world-class engineering organization in Shanghai, China that delivers globally scalable, locally excellent retail technology platforms. You will:\nEstablish China as a center of excellence for retail innovation\nLead the development of proprietary, self-owned global platforms\nEnsure China-based teams operate as first-class global product teams\nBalance China-specific depth with global platform standardization\nBuild an engineering culture rooted in technical excellence, ownership, and global impact\nLead with Vision - and with Code\nLead and scale multiple engineering teams responsible for building globally critical retail and commercial platforms from China.\nShape the technical direction, platform roadmap, and execution focus in close partnership with Product, Architecture, Security, and Global Tech Leadership.\nStay deeply hands-on: participate in architectural design, challenge system boundaries, review complex trade-offs, and guide critical technical decisions with clarity and conviction.\nEnsure all platforms align with the global architecture north star, long-term platform strategy, and regulatory requirements across regions.\nAct as a visible technical leader who sets the bar for engineering excellence, ownership, and quality.\nBuild Global Platforms with China-First Innovation\nOwn the delivery, quality, and technical excellence of globally deployed platforms built and operated from the China Tech Hub.\nLead the development of self-owned, modular, and scalable architectures that combine:\nDeep local innovation leveraging China’s advanced retail and technology ecosystem.\nA unified global core enabling rapid localization across APAC, EMEA, and AMER.\nDrive predictable execution by breaking down complex initiatives, managing uncertainty, and unblocking teams to deliver consistently at scale.\nMaintain high operational resilience by enforcing SLOs, incident response standards, security practices, and platform reliability expectations.\nContinuously raise the bar for how teams design, test, deploy, observe, and evolve production systems.\nShape Culture and Grow World-Class Talent\nBuild and nurture a high-performing engineering culture rooted in technical rigor, ownership, openness, and continuous learning.\nChampion global engineering values and principles through visible role modeling and decision-making.\nCoach and mentor Engineering Managers and senior engineers, developing strong technical leadership and succession pipelines.\nOwn hiring strategy and decisions for the China hub, consistently raising the talent bar in a highly competitive market.\nEstablish clear career paths, expectations, and feedback loops that enable engineers to grow and thrive.\nCollaborate and Communicate with Influence\nTell clear, compelling technical stories-translating complex systems and trade-offs into clarity for senior stakeholders.\nDrive alignment across global engineering, product, and business teams, ensuring shared understanding and coordinated execution.\nBuild trusted partnerships across regions, functions, and cultures, operating effectively in a highly distributed global environment.\nRepresent the China Tech Hub in global engineering leadership forums, architectural reviews, and cross-functional initiatives.\nConnect Engineering Work to Business Impact\nUnderstand the end-to-end commercial and retail journey, and connect engineering investments directly to scalability, speed, cost efficiency, and business outcomes.\nOperate with a platform-first mindset, ensuring solutions simplify the ecosystem, reduce duplication, and unlock future velocity.\nBalance short-term delivery needs with long-term technical health, ensuring sustainable growth of global platforms.\nYour Story:\nProven experience leading multiple engineering teams (ICs and Engineering Managers) within complex, fast-moving, product-driven organizations operating at global scale.\nA strong technical foundation with hands-on experience designing and evolving large-scale e-commerce platforms, including customer-facing, transactional, and backend commerce systems.\nDemonstrated experience architecting and delivering Point of Sale (POS) platforms and solutions, including system design for in-store operations, payments, and omnichannel integration.\nDeep understanding of distributed systems, platform architecture, and integration patterns, with systems operating across regions and regulatory environments.\nExcellent communication and stakeholder management skills-you translate technical complexity into clarity, influence decision-making, and create alignment across engineering, product, and business leadership.\nA consistent track record of delivering high-impact platforms and products with predictability, quality, and measurable outcomes.\nExperience shaping system architecture, influencing engineering principles and technical standards, and driving strong governance without slowing teams down.\nA genuine passion for coaching, mentoring, and growing engineering leaders, and for building a healthy, high-performing engineering culture.\nComfort navigating ambiguity, making high-judgment calls, and aligning distributed, cross-regional teams around a shared mission and technical vision.\nA builder’s mindset-resourceful, pragmatic, and execution-oriented, with a bias toward learning fast and iterating intelligently.\nAn entrepreneurial spirit-you think in terms of platform leverage, long-term value, and ownership, and you act like a true steward of the technology and the organization.\nCollaborative, grounded, and energized by building platforms and teams that deliver real global business impact.\nFluent in English and Mandarin and able to operate confidently in cross-cultural environments.\nWhat we offer:\nWe offer a dynamic, challenging and sportive environment that has been ranked as the ‘fastest growing sports company’ of its time. With offices across the globe, we are an international team who is hungry to innovate and build something incredible. We foster an active environment where each individual thrives for excellence and can achieve their full potential. This is where your work matters, you’re hands-on and your team members are amongst the very best in their respective disciplines and fields. \nIf you are driven to bring On to the next level, curious about the opportunity and want to be part of our growing team send us your application, and join the ONiverse!","description_format":"text","description_chars":7367,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"Advanced (C1)","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Continuous learning"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Footwear","Sportswear & Activewear"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-01-14T03:06:10Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.3,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":294,"expected_fill_days":69,"reasons":["conf:1","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/on-head-of-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/on-head-of-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T04:18:19Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5474,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":720276},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=720276"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fon-head-of-engineering"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fon-head-of-engineering"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fon-head-of-engineering"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/on-head-of-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fon-head-of-engineering"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":32323}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"on.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":32323},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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