Senior Product Engineer

GENERAL FUNCTION

The Product Operations function at WWW owns end to end operations from product development through commercialization and assist and ensure product go smoothly to production. The regional organization will be the key interface to the brand product teams on the sourcing strategy & allocation, aligning factory capabilities with the product categories and performance needs as well as ensuring the right products are placed at the right factories. The team will take product brief to box from each brand and ensure the product is on time, at cost, and to the highest level of quality through the various development cycles and into commercialization and bulk production. The Product Operations organization is accountable for ensuring the products are engineered with the design to cost, manufacturability, and efficiency (PPH) approach to enable factories in maximizing the value to the brands.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Make the very Best branded product which meets or beats brand target costs, designed for manufacturing, engineered for PPH and cost, with end to end ownership from product development through commercialization and first production.
• Be the 1 brand, 1 factory contact onsite ensuring high level of responsibility and ownership of all product designated by the Product Operations Manager.
• Establish and manage development and commercialization timelines across multiple factory clusters, ensuring alignment with brand objectives.
• Drive continuous process improvement initiatives to optimize efficiency, cost, and quality across the product lifecycle.
• Communicates with the factory, brand and company leadership, as well as Asia based counterparts in a timely manner.
• On site decision maker for the brand and works with Product Operations Manager to ensure all issues are socialized and addressed early on in the process.

Product Development / Commercialization:

• Responsible for all Development and Commercialization related responsibilities on designated workload in a brand at one factory cell and/or clusters associated with that factory group.
• Ensure his/her workload is maintained in a timely manner End 2 End process with a focus on Design to Cost, Design to Manufacturing, Design to Engineering, and to meet and beat PPH targets.
• Working with Product Operations Manager, ensure all designated model SOP’s are up to date with regard to engineering, Design for “X”, cost, and overall manufacturability.
• Partner with the costing and planning teams to ensure that each seasonal model can produced on time for Buy Readiness.
• Review and approve sample and full-size shell patterns, upper molds at each development stage.
• Collaborate with factory and lab teams to ensure all physical material tests, finish shoe tests, and RSL compliance meet WWW standards. Validate test results and apply override requests when necessary.
• Weekly development/commercialization status review and updates.
• Coordinate with vendors, factories, and material teams to ensure all materials are ordered on time, meet specifications, and quality expectations for the final product.
• Review and confirm specification/BOM for each milestone sample stage, and system maintenance.

Pre-production:

• Review, maintain, and execute the product according to the necessary brand specific timelines partnering with all necessary stakeholders in the process
• Oversee execution of seasonal product development and commercialization across multiple cells, ensuring timely updates in Centric systems.
• Maintain and optimize factory capability matrix for strategic product allocation and construction categorization.

Production:

• Develop and align strategy with QA leadership to ensure that production footwear meets the highest brand quality standards.
• Review SOP’s, CTP and CTQ, which are implemented at the Pre-production stage are verified and validated for each new strategic model alongside best in class processes.
• Monitor T4 timelines and proactively resolve issues to maintain on-time delivery and quality compliance.

KEY

COMPETENCIES:

• 5-7 years of related work experience in a matrix organization.
• Effective and impactful communicator to teams and stakeholders.
• Proven footwear product development and/or commercialization experience from a brand or factory is essential.
• Highly Collaborative with Asia based peers and US brand leads and makes and guides decisions.
• Highly organized and understands systems, able to implement major updates, and excels at change management within teams.