Altra: Senior Materials Designer

At Altra, we are on a never-ending journey to seek out opportunities to unlock potential in ourselves and others and to create a more diverse and inclusive running community. When we’re all working together as the best versions of ourselves, we can feel empowered both individually and as a community.

So, before we get to the job details, take a minute to learn a little more about us – our values and our culture. If you can see yourself working side-by-side with a team of people driven to discover more about ourselves and the world around us, Altra just may be the place for you.

To learn more about our values and our culture, visit Altra Careers or www.altrarunning.com.

Position: Sr. Materials Designer

What will you do?

• Manage the timeline and development of the seasonal footwear material palettes.
• Contribute to the Altra Global Creative Vision.
• Help bring innovative solutions to the material offering for performance footwear
• Partner with vendors to bring new ideas to the team and help drive sustainability as well.
• Utilizing the Creative Vision, Consumer Insights, trend services, and working with the Altra designers, assemble color and material direction and stories collaboratively.
• From the Creative Direction that is generated, build the material palette in partnership with Material Development that will meet the needs of all footwear product
• Produce the seasonal material presentation for all key seasonal milestones.
• Create material application usage guides in collaboration with the PM, design and Mat development team to adjust and/or include seasonal alignment across footwear
• Ensure the communication of materials throughout Altra by creating and distributing palettes, providing supporting materials (material swatch rings and presentations) in partnership with material Dev, and passing material information to both product management and development when needed.
• Responsible to work closely with other category design leads to cross pollinate ideas and maintain seasonal design direction.
• Support visual consistency in all product areas by maintain the palettes throughout the season.
• Organize and manage material library in conjunction with material development team.
• Responsible for the creation of visual tools used in presentations for in-line reviews, product line meetings, and potentially pre-line internal and external meetings.
• Researches industry and trade shows for new ideas, insights and design trends.
• Partners with material sourcing to develop innovative fabrications using the seasonal palette.
• Develops and tracks a design schedule to ensure timely completion of material assets according to the development calendar.
  
   

What do you need to succeed?

We all have unique skills that we bring to work and celebrate every day. For this role, there are foundation skills you’ll need to succeed and excel. Additionally, while formal education in a related field is great to have, we are most interested in your 4-6 years of experience and professional achievements.

The foundation skills you will need in this position are:

• Required to understand market structure, segmentation and distribution points for footwear.
• Experience or understanding of Fiery XF for printing color assets.
• High level of Proficiency in Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Word, Keynote, and Powerpoint.
• Experience in research analysis and design trend cycles.
• Experience in presenting, communicating and storytelling to support material usage, that support all design disciplines
• Competent in designing and developing material assets that support design.
• Experience in managing multiple seasons that overlap.
• Experience in cross department communication and collaboration.
• Strong vision on market trends.
• Excellent knowledge of formulating material palettes.
• Entrepreneur mindset and innovator at heart
• Strong knowledge and understanding of material design tools.
• Excellent communications skills, including the ability to present concepts to the cross department teams and management.