Head of Engineering - Commercial Platform

Location: London

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Technology

In short

At On, the most exciting and fastest-growing global sports brand, we are looking for a Head of Engineering – Commercial Platform to lead the teams responsible for the core commercial foundation that powers On across every channel: Retail, DTC, Wholesale, and future growth vectors.

This role owns the platforms that make experiences possible at scale — POS & Retail Experience Platform, Customer Profile Platform, Customer Communication Platform, Merchandising & Pricing Platform, Commercial Product API Platform, and Growth & Expansion Platform. Your mission is to build a cohesive, reliable, and reusable platform foundation so any channel team can build on top without extra effort, accelerating On’s commercial expansion for the coming years. You will manage multiple teams (ICs + Engineering Managers), drive platform strategy and technical excellence, and partner closely with Product, Data, Security, Enterprise Architecture, and Experience Engineering leaders to ensure the platform is scalable, composable, resilient, and easy to consume.

Your entrepreneurial and results-driven mindset, paired with strong platform engineering depth and proven global-scale execution, will make you a key member of the leadership team shaping On’s future commercial capabilities.

Your Mission

Lead Platform Vision — and Deliver Leverage

Lead and grow multiple engineering teams responsible for On’s commercial platform foundation
Shape platform strategy, operating model, and multi-year roadmap in partnership with Product and senior leadership
Define what “platform success” means: adoption, reliability, time-to-integrate, reuse, and developer/consumer experience
Stay deeply hands-on: drive architectural reviews, challenge design decisions, and ensure strong technical governance
Ensure alignment with On Tech’s architecture north star and long-range platform strategy

Build a Commercial Foundation that Scales Globally

Own the technical excellence of platform services that operate across regions, channels, and market constraints
Build composable platform capabilities (APIs, events, domain services, shared data contracts) that minimize duplication and unlock velocity.
Build predictable execution: de-risk delivery, manage dependencies, and reduce lead time for platform consumers

Drive platform maturity across:

Reliability & Resilience (SLOs/SLIs, incident management, disaster recovery, offline-first patterns where needed)

Security & Privacy (identity, authorization, consent, data retention, regulatory requirements)

Scalability & Performance (traffic spikes, seasonal peaks, product drops, store operations)

Observability & Operability (monitoring, tracing, on-call excellence, runbooks)

Enable Experience Teams with a World-Class Developer Platform Mindset

Treat internal experience teams (DTC, retail, growth, wholesale) as customers — optimize for ease of use, documentation, and self-service
Establish high-quality platform interfaces: API standards, event contracts, SDKs, versioning, backward compatibility, and migration playbooks
Build strong cross-team collaboration patterns to unblock experience teams and drive shared outcomes
Balance autonomy and alignment: empower teams while ensuring consistency, governance, and simplicity

Operate with “High Heat” Excellence On is a high-growth brand: launches, drops, peak demand, store openings, and market expansion create real operational pressure

Build systems and teams that thrive in high-stakes environments by:

enforcing SLO ownership and operational readiness
raising incident response standards and postmortem quality
ensuring robust rollout strategies, feature flags, and fallback mechanisms

Make “boring reliability” a platform feature

Shape Culture, Talent, and the Leadership Bench

Foster a culture rooted in curiosity, craftsmanship, feedback, and accountability
Coach Engineering Managers and senior engineers; build a strong leadership pipeline
Own hiring, performance, and org design — always raising the bar and improving how we recruit and onboard
Model On’s values and tech principles through visible leadership and clear standards

Connect Platform Work to Business Impact

Translate commercial strategy into platform bets and measurable outcomes
Build a platform that reduces time-to-market for: new stores and store formats, new regions and regulatory requirements, new partners and channels & new growth experiments
Make trade-offs with clarity: time-to-deliver vs. long-term leverage, local optimization vs. global standardization, build vs. buy.

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Your story

Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams (ICs + EMs), ideally in platform-heavy, product-driven organizations
Deep platform engineering expertise with a track record of building and scaling global, distributed, mission-critical platforms
Strong architectural leadership across domains such as:

identity and access (IDP, authN/authZ, consent)
customer profile and customer-360 patterns
communication orchestration (email/SMS/push), preference management merchandising and pricing systems (rules, experimentation, governance, auditability)
API platforms (standards, versioning, gateways, developer experience)
retail/POS platforms (offline resilience, device constraints, fiscalization readiness is a plus)

Strong product and stakeholder mindset: you can simplify complexity, align diverse groups, and drive decisions in sophisticated environments
A track record of predictable delivery with high quality — you can navigate ambiguity, dependencies, and cross-functional constraints.
Fluent communicator: you tell compelling technical stories and create clarity for all levels (ICs to execs)
Strong people leadership: you coach leaders, build healthy teams, and cultivate high performance
A startup mindset: resourceful, iterative, bias-to-action, and comfortable building foundations while the company scales rapidly
Collaborative, humble, and energized by On’s mission to ignite human spirit through movement

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About the Team

As you might expect from a running brand, the wider E-Commerce team at On is a fast-paced place to be. You will work in the diverse Berlin-based Customer platform team as part of Commercial Technology. You will collaborate with roles including Software Engineers, QA Engineers, Product Managers, Data Analytics, Marketing and others of stream-aligned or platform teams that are located in Berlin, Zurich and London.

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What we offer

On is a place that is centered around growth and progress. We offer an environment designed to give people the tools to develop holistically – to stay active, to learn, explore and innovate. Our distinctive approach combines a supportive, team-oriented atmosphere, with access to personal self-care for both physical and mental well-being, so each person is led by purpose.

On is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating a work environment that is fair and inclusive, where all decisions related to recruitment, advancement, and retention are free of discrimination.

Build the better you

What to expect

We want to set everyone up for success, so here’s the lowdown on how we hire. Our process is a two-way street – bringing you into our culture, while helping us learn how you think.

Our full process can last about eight weeks from application to offer, because we care about getting it right. These steps explain how we usually do things.

Before you get started, feel free to consider if you want to work with us. Strange question? Well, we give people a lot of space to navigate their day-to-day and that style isn't for everyone. We want you to be passionate about what you do and be sure this is the right fit. Because when skills and passion combine – it creates that 'Wow' moment.