Senior Lead - Footwear Costing
On Running · Zürich
In Short:
The Senior Lead Footwear Costing Strategy & Margin Governance is responsible for shaping the Brand’s footwear costing strategy and enterprise margin governance across the entire product creation lifecycle.
Acting as a strategic business partner to the creation leadership, the role drives cost transparency, margin optimization, and governance excellence by integrating product, innovation, sustainability, sourcing, and finance perspectives into executive decision-making.
Reporting to the Head of Footwear Costing, the Senior Lead is responsible to establishes the creation Costing operating model, governance standards, and strategic direction for footwear costing while enabling profitable and sustainable growth through fact-based decision making.
Your Mission:
- Shape and continuously evolve the Brand’s creation footwear costing strategy and operating model.
- Lead end-to-end margin governance from target margin setting through target FOB, product creation cross functions
- Supporting Costing governance frameworks, costing standards, decision rights, and best practices across the global footwear organization.
- Translate business strategy into actionable costing and profitability recommendations.
- Provide executive-level business cases and financial insights that support product investment, portfolio optimization, and long-term profitability.
- Own global costing methodologies, assumptions, tools, dashboards, and reporting standards.
- Drive digital transformation, automation, and continuous improvement of costing processes.
- Ensure data integrity, transparency, and a single source of truth for costing and margin reporting.
- Influence cross-functional leaders to align commercial ambition with financial performance.
- Coach and develop costing capability while strengthening financial literacy across Product Creation.
- Deliver sustainable margin improvement while enabling innovation and sustainability ambitions.
- Strengthen executive decision quality through robust financial analysis and scenario modeling.
- Build scalable governance that supports long-term competitiveness and profitable growth
Your Story:
- University degree in Business, Economics, Finance, Engineering, or a related field, with a strong passion for value engineering.
- 8+ years of experience in footwear costing, sourcing, supply chain
finance, or product economics within a premium or performance footwear brand. - Strong understanding of footwear construction, manufacturing processes, and key cost drivers.
- Proven experience owning or driving costing processes and tools in a cross-functional environment.
- Advanced analytical capability with strong proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint, combined with sound commercial judgment and high integrity.
- Adaptable, resilient, and effective communicator in fast-paced, cross-cultural environments.
- Fluent in English (written and spoken).
Your Team:
The Footwear Costing Team supports the brand by delivering fact-based cost transparency, margin discipline, and decision-ready insights across the end-to-end footwear creation process.