Senior Lead Footwear Developer

In short: As the Senior Lead Footwear Developer for Performance Running, you serve as the strategic technical consultant for our most critical product category. Based in our Zurich HQ, your role is to ensure high-level alignment between design intent and manufacturing feasibility. Rather than managing the granular execution of every product, you provide the technical governance and cross-functional support necessary to maintain performance integrity as the category scales. The Senior Lead Development role will report to the Senior Lead Run Footwear Development on the Performance Run team supporting global footwear.

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.