Senior Lead - Footwear Developer

On Running · Zürich

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In short

Based at our Zurich HQ, you will be the driving force behind delivering the most premium sports products in the industry, championing groundbreaking creation and fearlessly challenging traditional processes to achieve it. In this role, you will seamlessly connect the granular with the strategic—acting as a hands-on technical master of the details while serving as the high-level strategic consultant for On’s most critical category. By ensuring perfect alignment between design vision and manufacturing feasibility, you will set the standard for footwear creation. You will provide the technical governance, cross-functional leadership, and visionary support necessary to implement elite performance standards and protect product integrity.

The Senior Lead Development role will report to the Head of Innovation Footwear, supporting the wider global footwear department.

Please Read Before Applying:
To ensure a smooth and efficient recruitment process, we kindly ask all applicants to submit their CV in English, as this is the working language of our company.

Your Mission

• Technical Stewardship: Act as the primary technical advisor during the briefing and design phases to ensure performance running concepts are aligned with global manufacturing capabilities.
• Strategic Synchronization: Facilitate technical alignment between Zurich-based Design/Product Management and the Asia-based execution teams, ensuring that the "performance soul" of the category is preserved across all franchises.
• Process Enablement: Support the evolution of development standards by identifying technical bottlenecks and advising on best practices that improve category-wide efficiency.
• Advisory & Escalation Support: Serve as the senior technical point of contact for Asia-based development partners, providing guidance on complex technical hurdles and supporting the resolution of high-level production escalations.
• Performance Quality Assurance: Support the validation of fit, feel, and durability standards, ensuring that category-wide technical benchmarks are consistently met across different factory partners.
• Knowledge Facilitation: Foster a culture of technical excellence by mentoring the broader development team and translating complex innovation breakthroughs into actionable development frameworks.

Your Story

• Experience: 8–12+ years in footwear development. A background rooted in high-performance footwear and technical complexity is preferred. 
• Passionate product builder: You love to build product that makes athletes better, obsessing over the details and the athlete.
• Influential Leadership: Proven ability to influence product direction and technical outcomes through partnership and advisory, rather than direct line management or project ownership.
• Systemic Thinking: A deep understanding of how performance tooling, materials, and construction impact the global supply chain and product lifecycle.
• Collaborative Bridge: Exceptional at navigating HQ and regional dynamics, acting as a "technical translator" between creative vision and factory execution.
• Strategic Judgment: Highly skilled at evaluating technical trade-offs and providing recommendations that balance innovation with commercial scalability.
• Consultative Communication: A trusted voice capable of guiding stakeholders toward technically sound decisions while maintaining strong cross-functional relationships.

Attributes of a successful candidate:

• The Technical Advisor: You don't need to hold the pen on every tech pack, but you are the person everyone consults when a design pushes the boundaries of physics.
• The Strategic Partner: You focus on the "how" and "why," ensuring the category’s technical roadmap is robust and scalable.
• The Alignment Specialist: You thrive in the space between teams, ensuring that no technical detail is "lost in translation" between Zurich and our global manufacturing partners.
• A clear communicator in English, both verbal and written.

Your Team

You will join the Zurich-based Footwear Development team, serving as a senior pillar of expertise. A high-performance collective of engineers, developers, and makers who serve as the technical heart of the brand.

In Zurich, our team acts as the primary link between Biomechanical Research, Material Science, Design, and Sourcing, ensuring that every innovation is grounded in technical reality before it reaches the athlete.

Our mission is to relentlessly elevate the performance and technical attributes of our footwear. We don't just facilitate product creation; we engineer the "ride." As part of the vertical, you will be surrounded by specialists who are obsessed with creating the best fitting, performing and desirable products in the market.

We pride ourselves on a culture of technical rigor and "Swiss Engineering," where we challenge the status quo to solve the most complex biomechanical hurdles in the industry. Your role within this team is to ensure that as our category expands, our technical standards and the performance "soul" of our footwear remain uncompromised.

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