Lead - Footwear Developer, Athlete Servicing (Football) @ On AG

In short

• At On, we set out to ignite the human spirit through movement. After disrupting running and tennis, we are bringing our design philosophy, biomechanical engineering, and radical innovation to the pitch.
• As the Lead Footwear Developer – Athlete Servicing (Football), you will pioneer and lead our elite football athlete footwear program. Relentlessly athlete obsessed, you will work side-by-side with our growing roster of world-class footballers, driving the creation of bespoke, game-changing boots tailored to their exact physical demands, pitch conditions, and biomechanics. Operating out of our innovation hub, you will translate player telemetry and pitch feedback into detailed player profiles—enabling proactive performance planning, driving continuous boot improvements, and delivering 100% athlete satisfaction so our players keep scoring.

Your Mission

• Be the Athlete Insight Hub: Proactively anticipate performance challenges, acting as the brand’s technical authority and lead knowledge holder for elite football athletes.
• Pioneer the Personalization Lab: Build and scale a world-leading personalization hub dedicated to elite football athletes, while innovating at the frontier of scalable athlete and consumer personalization models.
• Bridge Athlete & Innovation: Act as the vital connector between athlete insights and radical innovation. Leveraging your end-to-end product creation expertise, you will intuitively transform Sports science data and feedback into actionable technical discoveries that fuel continuous disruption in the football world.
• Advance Next-Gen & Legacy Construction: Seamlessly merge frontier technologies—such as LightSpray™—with proven legacy construction techniques, continuously unlocking new paradigms in athlete-specific fit, structural support, and manufacturing efficiency.
• Lead Bespoke Football Boot Engineering: Direct and oversee modification of custom boots for elite roster players, utilizing player data to create optimized, personalized product that delivers on our premium performance promise.
• Traction & Tooling Customization: Oversee and develop player-specific soleplates (SG/FG configurations, stud heights, conical vs. bladed hybrid layouts, and custom flex/torsion plates) to balance explosive traction, rotational release, and joint protection.
• Rapid Maker Prototyping: Collaborate with Dream on Labs to iterate quickly—adjusting lasts, testing experimental materials, bonding foams, and tuning composite plates to resolve player needs between fixtures.
• Athlete & Sports Marketing Liaison: Lead on-site boot fittings, locker-room check-ins, and training-ground wear tests. A clear understanding of athlete interactions allows you to translate subjective player feedback into concrete engineering adjustments, serving as the critical bridge that feeds athlete learnings directly into the core inline business.
• Match-Day Delivery & Compliance: Own and drive delivery timelines across club matches, training blocks, international windows, and major tournaments. Ensure every pair complies with FIFA equipment regulations while withstanding elite match-day stresses.
• Scale the Learnings: Partner closely with core Inline Football Development and Materials Innovation to scale proven athlete customizations and tooling breakthroughs into commercial product lines.

Your Story

• Football Footwear Craft: 5+ years of technical footwear development experience with a strong focus on high-performance football boots or cleated footwear, with demonstrated experience driving complex projects or mentoring development teams.
• Novel & Legacy Manufacturing Fluency: Ability to quickly interpret, understand, and apply novel manufacturing methods (including robotic automation, additive manufacturing, and LightSpray™) while deeply respecting and mastering traditional, legacy footwear assembly.
• End-to-End Product Creation Mastery: Comprehensive grasp of full lifecycle footwear engineering and innovation pipelines, with the proven ability to translate bespoke, small-batch athlete solutions into scalable innovation frameworks.
• Pitch & Traction Knowledge: Comprehensive technical understanding of cleated tooling, plate materials (such as TPU and Pebax), torsional stiffness, and stud pressure distribution across various pitch surfaces.
• Practical Prototyping Skills (Bonus): Comfortable with hands-on sample work—such as basic lasting adjustments, custom insole fitting, minor upper tweaks, or working alongside sample room technicians to get prototypes match-ready.
• Technical Rigor: Familiarity with 2D/3D footwear software (such as Rhino, Crispin, or Romans CAD) and experience interpreting scan, pressure, or gait data to guide boot modifications.
• Match-Pace Composure: Calm, organized, and solutions-oriented under tight deadlines, ensuring sudden fixture-related footwear needs are met without compromising product quality.
• Explorer Mindset: Excited by the blank canvas of building On’s football presence from the ground up, blending Swiss engineering with modern football culture.

Meet the Team

• We are an innovative, creative, and science-driven team dedicated to converting cutting-edge ideas into high-performance footwear. Driven by constant curiosity and an unrelenting ambition, we are a collective built to disrupt: constantly breaking the system only to rebuild it as the most innovative brand in football.
• Our team combines deep expertise in engineering, development, and product management to create gear that meets rigorous scientific and technical standards. We foster a hands-on, highly collaborative environment where experts work alongside the very best in their respective fields. United by a shared obsession with excellence and deeply athlete obsessed, we will never stop on our quest to redefine the game and create the world’s best football products, time and time again.

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.