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Lead - Footwear Dynamic Testing - Innovation
Location: Zurich
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In short
Product Testing is the voice of the athlete and the consumer at On. We’re responsible for ensuring every On product meets the highest quality standards and delivers a premium, high-performance experience by combining scientific rigor with real-world insight. As Lead in Footwear Testing, you will own the end-to-end validation of cutting-edge concepts from our Innovation pipelines. You will lead high-visibility brand bets, mentor junior team members, and establish the strategic framework and scalable testing structures that blend objective performance insights with consumer psychology—up until the concepts are ready to be handed over to inline development.
Your Mission
- Lead highly visible testing projects and major brand bets within the Innovation space. You will navigate complex stakeholder landscapes and drive cross-functional alignment for key early-stage initiatives that impact the broader company direction.
- Own the end-to-end testing process for complex concepts. Design, build, and establish efficient testing processes, timelines, and strategic pipelines, defining validation milestones to ensure a seamless, data-rich handover to the inline testing specialists.
- Integrate consumer insights and psychological principles to optimize how we interact with our tester pool. Design subjective assessment methods that accurately capture the consumer mindset, perception, and emotional response to early-stage products.
- Process large volumes of complex data utilizing advanced processing tools, translating testing results into dynamic visualizations and clear reports that enable confident decision-making for project stakeholders.
- Conduct performance analyses independently or in close collaboration with Sports Science to find correlations between our testing data and their objective insights, ensuring foundational excellence in fit, comfort, durability, and performance.
- Handle the technical nuances and complex testing requirements of novel manufacturing methods and advanced prototyping, applying deep industry experience to solve unique validation challenges before inline integration.
- Deliver benchmarking and competitor insights on early-stage concepts to identify opportunities for innovation and product differentiation.
- Drive team goals and process improvements. Act as a role model and mentor to junior testing specialists, contributing to the continuous evolution of testing methodologies within the fast-paced innovation space.
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Your story
- 7+ years of experience in footwear testing, product creation, sports science, or development, with a strong focus on footwear innovation and early-stage validation.
- A background or strong foundational knowledge in psychology, human factors, or consumer science, enabling you to extract nuanced, subjective feedback from testers.
- Solid capability in handling and visualizing large datasets using advanced data analysis tools to efficiently clean, process, and present complex testing results.
- Excellent communication skills, capable of driving alignment across cross-functional teams and confidently presenting strategic data on major brand bets to partners across the organization.
- A strong track record of setting up structured methodologies from the ground up, clearly defining project scopes, and a passion for mentoring junior talent.
- Detail-oriented, creative, and solutions-focused, with a proactive mindset and a strong passion for performance footwear.
- Comfortable working with flexibility and adapting to shifting priorities in a highly innovative environment.
- Open to occasional global travel to connect, facilitate, and test directly with our target consumers in key markets.
- Fluent in English (written and spoken).
About the Team
We’re a team responsible for making sure that the products for On represent the highest quality & performance standards. We have a lot of responsibility to meet the needs and demands of our customers. So we analyse, test and validate our products in the most comprehensive manner. Only products that pass our rigorous tests ever go to market.
About the Team video
Ernest
Footwear Development, Ho Chi Minh City
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.
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.