Lead - Footwear Costing

This role executes the Brand’s footwear costing strategy in Zurich, ensuring consistent, fact-based cost and margin management across the product creation lifecycle. Acting as a strategic partner to cross-functional teams, the Lead Footwear Costing translates global costing direction into robust processes, tools, and decision-ready insights that enable profitable growth.

The role reports to the Head of Footwear Costing, who defines the global footwear costing strategy and operating model and provides executive-level strategic direction and governance for the global footwear costing function.

• Execute and continuously evolve the footwear costing strategy and operating model in Zurich, in line with the direction set by the Head of Footwear Costing.
• Embed end-to-end costing into all key product creation milestones, from early concept through commercialization.
• Own and develop costing tools, templates, dashboards, and core assumptions, ensuring data quality, version control, and a single source of truth.
• Partner closely with Product Strategy, Design, Development, Materials, Sustainability, Sourcing, Finance, and Controlling to integrate costing early and effectively.
• Deliver reliable product cost and margin reporting, ensuring timelines, quality, and decision gates are met.
• Represent the costing function with clarity and credibility, strengthening cost literacy and decision quality across creation functional teams.

• University degree in Business, Economics, Finance, Engineering, or a related field, with a strong passion for value engineering.
• 5+ years of experience in footwear costing, sourcing, supply chain finance, or product economics within a premium or performance footwear brand.
• Strong understanding of footwear construction, manufacturing processes, and key cost drivers.
• Proven experience owning or driving costing processes and tools in a cross-functional environment.
• Advanced analytical capability with strong proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint, combined with sound commercial judgment and high integrity.
• Adaptable, resilient, and effective communicator in fast-paced, cross-cultural environments.
• Fluent in English (written and spoken).

The Footwear Costing Team supports the Brand by delivering fact-based cost transparency, margin discipline, and decision-ready insights across the end-to-end footwear creation process.

Just by the banks of the Limmat you’ll find our largest global hub in Zürich West – On Labs – where you can hike up 12 floors through our custom-built spiral trail.

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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.

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.

You'll start by submitting your application to a specific role.

We try to keep this step as simple as possible. We do get a lot of applications, but we review them all. If you're a good fit to the role, a recruiter will follow up with you directly. If you didn't receive a reply, or were unsuccessful this time around, we encourage you to look for other possible matches at On.