Senior Lead - Footwear Lab Standard & Method Engineer

In short

You will work in a fast-paced environment that offers autonomy and opportunities for growth. As the Senior Lead - Laboratory for the Asia region, you will be instrumental in delivering world-class laboratory operations aligned to global standards while driving localized execution, governance, and collaboration. You will act as the primary bridge between regional labs and the Zurich global lab leadership, ensuring consistency, data reliability, governance, and continuous improvement across all lab practices. You will champion standardization of processes, support local lab teams with training and operational excellence, and provide strategic input to enhance lab systems and reporting globally.

Your Mission

• Global Guidelines & Local Roll-Out: Lead implementation and roll-out of global lab guidelines, procedures, and standards across all labs in the Asia region. Translate global requirements into clear, actionable local practices, ensuring alignment with both global expectations and local realities.
• Collaboration & Leadership: Act as a strong partner to the Zurich Global Lab Lead offering timely feedback, actionable insights, and strategic input into the development and refinement of global lab frameworks. Drive cross-functional collaboration product development, sourcing, quality, and compliance stakeholders to ensure integrated lab processes. Leading central lab team members to work collaboratively with operation lab specialists on driving to the same business direction.
• Supplier Representation & Transparency: Serve as the regional point of transparency for laboratory expectations and requirements across Tier 1 and Tier 2 business partners. Ensure structured escalation of operational issues, capability gaps, and compliance risks to Zurich labs, while actively gathering and representing supplier feedback to drive continuous improvement and expansion of the global laboratory framework.
• Governance & Standardization: Establish and maintain local governance structures aligned with global lab policies, ensuring consistent execution and adherence to standardized practices. Lead initiatives to eliminate regional variability and ensure reliable, repeatable methodology across labs.
• Audits & Quality Assurance: Coordinate and conduct internal audits, capability assessments, and compliance checks to validate alignment to global guidelines and local governance expectations. Partner with global and regional quality teams to remediate findings, embed corrective actions, and drive compliance consistency.
• Data Reliability & Reporting: Ensure integrity, accuracy, and traceability of lab data across regional facilities. Provide strategic recommendations and oversight for lab reporting systems, metrics tracking, and data governance frameworks, ensuring robust and trustworthy results.
• Training & Local Support: Design and deliver training programs, workshops, and onboarding to upskill local lab teams - fostering adoption of global methods and improved efficiency. Serve as the primary regional resource for troubleshooting, best practice adoption, and capability building.
• Systems Development & Continuous Improvement: Contribute to evolution of lab systems (PLM, data platforms), tools, and reporting dashboards with a focus on usability, accuracy, and operational efficiency. Identify process gaps and lead projects that improve automation, standardization, and lab output value.
• Team Hiring & Leadership. You will build, grow, and lead a high-performing lab team in Asia. This includes: Recruiting top talent and scaling the lab organization, Coaching, inspiring, and developing direct reports to deliver excellence, Setting team goals, fostering accountability, and driving a culture of learning and collaboration.

What success looks like: 

• High level of efficiency and consistency across Asia labs in compliance, data quality, and execution of test methods.
• Regional lab operations that are fully aligned with global guidelines, local governance obligations, and audit expectations.
• Strong strategic partnership with the Zurich team, reflected in shared initiatives, process improvements, and operational efficiency gains.
• Continuous uplift in regional lab capability, knowledge sharing, and adoption of standardized practices.

Your story

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Science, Engineering, Materials, Chemistry, or related field (advanced degree preferred).
• 10+ years of experience in laboratory leadership, quality systems, or testing operations within the textile/apparel/consumer product industries.
• Proven experience in developing and implementing guidelines, governance frameworks, and standardized operating procedures.
• Strong collaboration skills and experience working with global cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated ability to drive improvement projects, audits, and compliance across complex environments.
• Experience in lab data systems, reporting tools development and implementation.
• Exceptional communication skills - capable of translating technical requirements into operational practices.
• Strong analytical thinking, project management, and training delivery expertise.
• Previous experience in global roll-out of standards and lab governance highly desirable.

Meet the Team

This role offers the opportunity to be at the forefront of harmonizing global lab excellence with regional execution - shaping consistent, high-quality lab practices that support innovation, compliance, and product performance around the world.