Lead - Footwear Development

In short

As a Lead - Footwear Development, you will lead the development team to drive the footwear development process smoothly from concept to production. You will also work cross-functionally with multi-national product creation teams to support the development process between Zurich, Asia and factories.

Your Mission

• Lead development of seasonal projects on site with On's footwear sourcing partner(s), monitor Key Performance Matrix and facilitate our partners to build strong and sustainable performances in all areas of the development cycle.
• Proactively guide the team to recommend construction/costing/process solutions in regards to all technical blueprints (bottom / upper), upper patterns and materials to optimize performance, manufacturability, and aesthetics perspective.
• Ability to lead thought around footwear innovation and problem solving for commercialization and achieve on time delivery in terms of seasonal calendars.
• Proficient at problem solving for development,commercialization or production issues - understanding the upstream and downstream effects.
• Display an in-depth knowledge of the manufacturing process with the ability to learn new manufacturing techniques and apply them to products.
• Lead meetings with cross-functional teams during various phases to review, evaluate issues and drive action plans. Demonstrate strong problem-solving skills with persistent questioning to find out the “whys”.
• Effectively communicate with Asia and Zurich teams of all the issues and solutions in terms of construction, cost and aesthetics.
• Lead the development team to ensure that products are manufacturable and meet cost, quality, fit feel and ride expectations.
• Coach and encourage team members to actively engage in questions, research, observing, networking, and experimenting to inform project and program direction
• Develop strong working relationships with internal and external partners to enable problem solving to achieve win-win situations
• Update on the latest footwear trends and manufacturing process and techniques
• Work with other development leads to standardize the development process across teams and factories, deliver training and share the best practice to the cross-functional product teams.
• Taking the lesson learnt for every season to share to the team and other development teams to avoid repeating for next seasons.
• Manage and monitor factory development capacity to accompany On's volume growth, manage potential risks and key bottlenecks.

Your story

• 7+ years of development experience working with multiple footwear categories or extremely specialized in category and able to provide solution driven suggestions/guidance.
• People management experience is needed.
• Knowledge in industry tooling process to include 2D/3D CAD and CAM. Proficient in Adobe Illustrator is a plus. Good knowledge of pattern engineering, tooling processes and mold making.
• Excellent verbal and written skills in English. Chinese or Vietnamese is a plus.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, presentation skills, must be extremely detail oriented.
• Strong organizational skills and independent work habits.
• Ability to anticipate how a decision made can affect our customers, our partners, our products or other departments’ operations and/or morale; “connecting the dots”.
• Demonstration of innovation and initiative - always looking at improving our products and processes while also displaying a willingness to dive into the details and help out wherever necessary.

Meet the team

This is your opportunity to become part of the world’s fastest growing sportswear company.