Designer II, Footwear Innovation

Join to apply for the Designer II, Footwear Innovation role at ASICS Creation Center

This range is provided by ASICS Creation Center. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

$85,000.00/yr - $97,500.00/yr

The ASICS Creation Center, LLC is ASICS Corporation’s product creation office based in Boston, MA. This organization's focus is on taking innovation and product creations to new heights. The team sits across the following areas:
Innovation, Performance Running, Sportstyle and Core Performance Sports.

At ASICS, our Sound Mind, Sound Body™ philosophy is more than a tagline, it’s our way of life. Over 75 years ago our founder, Kihachiro Onitsuka, saw that sport and movement had the power to lift spirits, project positivity, and propel people and whole communities forward.

ASICS provides a diverse and inclusive culture that enables learning, growth, and opportunity at all levels. Our robust employee benefits allow for real work-life balance and a strong sense of community. We empower our employees to pursue their career goals. If this sounds like you, then we want you on our team.

POSITION SUMMARY:

We are looking for a passionate design innovator, to help create industry-leading innovative performance footwear designs and bring them from concept to reality.

The Designer II, Footwear Innovation, collaborates with the innovation team to research, ideate, design and develop new high performance footwear technology concepts while supporting alignment with organizational processes. This person will also support the creation of prototypes, presentations and visual communication tools and tech‑packs to facilitate making, development and testing, and the successful presentation and adoption of innovations in the in‑line categories.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• No supervisory responsibilities.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Push the boundaries of design language, form, function and materials while maintaining performance goals and developing manufacturability.
• Creates sketches, rough prototypes, detailed tech packs, CAD files, and presentations to convey concept intents and works with development counterparts to provide necessary information to make and test them.
• Connect with the consumer, internal wear testing, and internal sports research lab, to gather insights and use these to ideate and conceptualize new high performance footwear constructions and technologies.
• Utilize knowledge of footwear, design, human performance, and manufacturing to propose new ways to look at our standards and develop new perspectives and the typical high performance footwear problems.
• Support and execute the global footwear innovation strategy, help identifying and driving key design opportunities linked to consumer, enterprise and business goals.
• Help find and support innovation partnerships beyond the design function (Research, Marketing, Engineering, Development, etc.)
• Adhere to footwear innovation go‑to‑market deadlines, including innovation reviews and mainline design reviews.
• Articulate important project updates and complex information to stakeholders effectively.
• Ensure cross-functional partners have up-to-date information on each project and facilitate effective collaborations.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

• Good understanding of footwear design, construction and production.
• Highly creative, curious, and passionate about innovation.
• Ability to work through and manage ambiguity.
• Strong sketching and ideation skills.
• Strong 2D cad and tech packaging skills.
• 3d modeling, rendering, and 3D printing skills are a plus.
• Knowledge and experience with sustainable design and manufacturing are a plus.
• Integrates handcraft and making as part of the creative process.
• Familiar with footwear product manufacturing processes including materials/fabrics, molding, etc.
• Proficient with Adobe Creative Cloud (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop)
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Experience with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• Able to travel up to 20% of the time domestically and internationally.

CORE…