Join Our Team as Senior Lead, Sustainability - Footwear Creation
At On, we believe that innovation, performance, and sustainability must go hand in hand. In this role, you will transform our sustainability vision into scalable realities, ensuring that every product decision we make brings us closer to a lower-impact, higher-quality future. You will work at the intersection of Footwear Development, Engineering, Materials, and Testing, acting as both a change leader and a trusted advisor for sustainable creation.
Your Mission
- Translate sustainability from concept to scale: Guide how sustainability ambition turns into daily creation reality, from early design through development, ensuring every step reduces impact and enhances product quality.
- Define and implement frameworks: Create tools and metrics that enable the Footwear Creation teams to embed sustainability within Development, Engineering, Materials, and Testing.
- Act as a thought partner: Help teams interpret data, deconstruct LCAs, and make informed decisions regarding materials, processes, construction, and product design.
- Provide clarity and alignment: Ensure sustainability principles are consistently applied throughout the creation process.
- Anticipate dependencies: Translate complex goals into practical roadmaps that balance innovation, performance, cost, and manufacturability.
- Communicate progress: Use storytelling and insights to connect data to meaningful impacts across products and teams.
Drive Sustainable Creation and Material Integration
- Lead key initiatives: Scale up projects such as dope dye and low-impact dyeing solutions across core footwear franchises while ensuring alignment across Development, Engineering, Materials, and Sourcing.
- Integrate sustainability into workflows: From material selection to testing, ensure that sustainability is embedded at every stage of creation.
- Partner with Sourcing: Build supplier readiness and facilitate successful material transfer at the commercialization level.
- Collaborate with Testing: Validate durability and product lifespan, ensuring that sustainability choices support overall performance.
- Partner with Materials Leadership: Evolve the footwear material toolbox, accelerating the adoption of preferred and low-impact materials without compromising On’s standards for aesthetics and performance.
- Track and report KPIs: Monitor material integration and waste reduction, contributing to On’s Impact Progress Report.
Enable Teams and Lead Change
- Serve as a change catalyst: Help teams embrace sustainability as a core driver of innovation and quality.
- Deliver training and tools: Empower teams to make informed sustainability-led decisions.
- Offer expert guidance: Provide coaching on LCA interpretation and material trade-offs for sustainable decision-making.
- Foster collaboration: Ensure consistent adoption of sustainability practices across creation hubs.
- Influence leaders and peers: Embed sustainability into planning, processes, and success metrics across Product Creation.
Your Story
You are a seasoned professional with over 8 years of experience in the apparel or footwear industry and a solid educational background in material or environmental science. As a natural operator, you excel at setting targets and executing complex strategies effectively. Your hands-on experience in footwear product creation and production environments allows you to understand the entire journey from concept to manufacturable product.
Motivated by practical challenges, you align people, processes, and priorities to deliver measurable progress. With a balanced approach to sustainability, quality, and performance, you bring a project-management mindset that drives results in fast-paced, cross-functional settings. Your capability to simplify complexity and guide teams through data-driven insights positions you as a trusted partner and change enabler.
You may not have held a formal sustainability title, but your deep understanding of sustainable creation practices enables you to turn innovative ideas into tangible outcomes, shaping how sustainable footwear is produced at scale.
About the Team
We are a dedicated team with significant responsibilities, tasked with implementing and executing the sustainability strategy for our footwear materials. Our goal is to innovate products and processes through the lens of sustainability, driving material priorities into reality through collaboration with various departments. As the Senior Lead, you will play a crucial role in leading and influencing our team while fostering effective communication and education around sustainability initiatives.
Apply online using the form below. Please note that only applications matching the job profile will be considered.