About this role
For more than 46 years, the Laurastar Group has combined innovation, ambition, and excellence to create long\-lasting products that beautify and purify your clothes and home. The family\-owned Swiss group’s expertise now extends from ironing and fabric care to hygienic steam systems aimed at creating a healthier home for you and your loved ones. Thanks to its unique Dry Microfine Steam DMS technology, Laurastar is the world leader in high\-end steam systems, with over 3 million products sold in over 40 countries worldwide. In Switzerland, where the Group’s headquarters are located, almost a quarter of households own at least one of the brand’s most popular products. Laurastar employs around 280 employees, including its subsidiaries in Germany, France, Benelux and Hungary.Our motivated, well\-trained, hard\-working, result\-oriented employees are the foundation of our success.If you would like to contribute to this success, we look forward to meeting you!To strengthen our R\&D team at our headquarters in Châtel\-St\-Denis, we are looking for our future,**Global R\&D Manager**Reporting directly to Julie Monney, co\-CEO, you will lead Laurastar’s R\&D activities and turn the company’s product vision into innovative products and services brought successfully to market. You will manage our R\&D team while driving current product development and future innovation in parallel.You will also play a key role in integrating AI, IoT and robotics into our products, services and ways of working, in close collaboration with internal departments, suppliers, universities, laboratories and technology partners.**Your key responsibilities****Manage the R\&D teamand turn the company’s product vision into products and services on the market.*** Supervise the R\&D team: priorities, coaching, technical decisions.* Run several development projects in parallel, from concept to market launch, on time and on budget.* Own the R\&D budget and the product development roadmap.**Run current product development and innovation in parallel, working with internal and external partners.*** Balance the development of today’s products with future innovation.* Drive next\-generation steam: miniaturisation, performance.* Explore new products and uses in fabric care and steam cleaning with the co\-CEO.**Bring AI, IoT data and robotics into Laurastar’s products, services and ways of working.*** Use AI tools daily and lead their adoption across R\&D to design, simulate, test and improve products faster.* Build partnerships with AI engineering platforms that use AI to speed up simulation and design.* Own our IoT product data: understand what connected products tell us, and build toward predictive analysis (usage, maintenance, next products).* Keep a close watch on home robotics and humanoid robots, and explore their potential for Laurastar.**Be the cross\-department lead for product development with purchasing, quality, in\-house production, marketing, digital and the other departments.*** Work hand in hand with these departments at every stage of development, so that projects move forward together from concept to production.* Bring the R\&D view into product, cost and launch decisions.**Help develop relationships with suppliers and partners, from industrialisation to universities, labs and technology companies.*** Work with our current development partners and suppliers.* Bring in new partners: universities, research labs and technology companies.**Your profile*** Engineering degree.* Confident daily user of AI tools, with a strong interest in their impact on product development.* Good understanding of IoT data and how it can be managed and used.* Strong interest in robotics. In\-depth expertise in humanoid robotics is not required.* Fluent English; French is an asset.* Willingness to travel when required.**Experience required*** Solid experience in a similar role, and a real passion for product development and innovation.* You have personally led developments, worked with suppliers and brought products to market.* Experience in industrialisation with suppliers: moving a product from development into series production.* You know how to find, negotiate and run partnerships with universities, labs and tech companies.**Your personality and soft skills*** You are a hands\-on engineering leader who enjoys building products and turning ideas into solutions people can use every day.* You have strong communication and interpersonal skills and can engage effectively with teams and stakeholders at every leve j4id10468579jm j4it1145jm j4iy26jm