Senior Lead - Sustainability, Footwear Creation / Senior Leadess - Sustainability, Footwear Creation

In Short

At On, innovation, performance, and sustainability go hand in hand. In the creation process, big ideas meet real-world impact. As the Senior Lead, Sustainability - Footwear Creation, you will transform sustainability vision into a scalable reality. Working at the intersection of Footwear Development, Engineering, Materials, and Testing, you will ensure that every product decision brings us closer to a lower-impact, higher-quality future. You will act as a change leader and trusted advisor for sustainable creation, providing the structure, expertise, and insight that enable teams to make informed decisions while closely partnering with our leaders in Sustainability Design, Strategy, and Innovation Management to shape how sustainability integrates throughout On’s footwear ecosystem.

Your Mission

• Translate sustainability from concept to scale: Guide how sustainability ambition becomes a daily reality throughout design, development, and scale-up, ensuring every step reduces impact while enhancing product quality.
• Define and implement frameworks: Establish tools and metrics that assist the Footwear Creation teams in embedding 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, and product constructions.
• Provide clarity and structure: Ensure sustainability principles are consistently applied across all functions throughout the creation process.
• Anticipate dependencies: Translate complex goals into actionable roadmaps that balance innovation, performance, cost, and manufacturability.
• Communicate progress: Use clear storytelling and insightful data to connect efforts with meaningful impacts across products and teams.

Drive Sustainable Creation and Material Integration

• Lead key initiatives: Scale up initiatives like dope dye and low-impact dyeing solutions across core footwear franchises, ensuring alignment within Development, Engineering, Materials, and Sourcing.
• Integrate sustainability: Incorporate sustainable practices into creation workflows, from material selection and component engineering to prototyping and testing.
• Partner with Sourcing: Build supplier readiness to facilitate successful transfer and scaling at the commercialization level.
• Collaborate with Testing: Validate durability, quality, and product lifespan, ensuring sustainability choices enhance performance and longevity.
• Track and report KPIs: Monitor creation-centric metrics, including material integration rates 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 an essential driver for innovation and quality.
• Deliver training: Provide tools and frameworks that empower creation teams to make sustainability-led decisions with confidence.
• Offer expert guidance: Coach teams on LCA interpretation, material trade-offs, and sustainable decision-making.
• Foster collaboration: Ensure consistent adoption of sustainability practices and learnings across Zurich Lab and VN creation hubs.
• Influence sustainability metrics: Advocate for the integration of sustainability into planning and success metrics across Product Creation.

Your Story

You bring over 8 years of progressive experience in the apparel or footwear industry, facing similar production challenges. Your educational background in material or environmental science complements your hands-on operational experience. You thrive on setting targets, meeting deadlines, and converting complex strategies into structured execution.

With a strong understanding of the footwear product creation process and experience in production or factory environments, you grasp the entire journey from concept to manufacturable product. You are motivated by practical challenges, balancing sustainability with performance, aesthetics, quality, cost, scale, and manufacturability, knowing that genuine innovation resides in this balance.

Your project management mindset enables you to transform ambition into actionable roadmaps, excelling in fast-paced, cross-functional environments that prioritize precision and accountability. As a trusted partner and change enabler, you simplify complexity, provide clarity, and utilize data and storytelling to inspire confidence in decision-making. While you may not have held a formal sustainability title, you possess a profound understanding of sustainable creation practices and their capacity to enhance products and processes.

Combining visionary ambition with operational discipline, you are passionate about turning innovative ideas into tangible outcomes that redefine how sustainable footwear is produced at scale.

About the Team

We are a dedicated team with significant responsibilities. In our Footwear Materials team, we implement and execute the sustainability strategy for the entire organization through our footwear materials, helping shape the future of the company. We conduct research, develop strategies, implement projects, and drive innovation in products and processes through the lens of sustainable materials and footwear. One of our key objectives is to translate strategic material sustainability priorities into reality, collaborating with various departments to ensure effective communication and education. As the Senior Lead, you will play a crucial role in leading and influencing our team while fostering collaboration across our global footwear creation network.

Apply online using the form below. Only applications matching the job profile will be considered.