Senior Director, Footwear Development

Department:  Footwear 

Reports to:  VP, Footwear Development and Engineering 

Location: Portland, OR 

 
Your opportunity at Arc’teryx: 

As the Senior Director, Footwear Development, you will lead the product creation and development process to deliver disruptive, aspirational, and sustainable products to the market. You will oversee the execution of our seasonal footwear plans from design concept through production readiness, ensuring a consistent level of quality, fit, and performance. You will operate at the intersection of balancing the athlete’s needs, technical feasibility and business objectives while you work in lockstep with Merchandising, Design, Manufacturing and other cross-functional teams to deliver product that inspires the core mountain athlete to reach new levels of performance. 

Meet your future team: 

Our Product Creation Development team is a dynamic group spread across the globe.  It sits within our Supply Chain organization and is a center of excellence partner with our Footwear Business Unit. The Arc’teryx Footwear team creates innovative, aesthetically striking product that exceeds the core mountain athlete’s outdoors needs across climbing, hiking, and trail running categories. We are builders, problem solvers and passionate outdoor enthusiasts. Fueled by curiosity, we take an immersive approach to identifying our athlete’s future needs – then, build, test, and validate products that solve for real functional challenges. We are a passionate collective with a focus on collaborative teamwork, and our vision is to redefine the industry. 

• Overseeing the footwear product development process from initial concept to commercialization ready, driving sustainability, performance, and profitability goals. 

• Acting as a critical thought partner to Supply Chain and Footwear Leadership Team as we evolve our teams’ strategic priorities. 

• Collaborating with the Footwear and Sourcing leadership teams to establish and execute a medium to long-term partner strategy grounded in product excellence, on-time delivery, quality, and risk mitigation. 

• Developing recommendations on our future organizational structure and the technical resources needed to support growth, and hiring the technical talent needed to address current and future needs. 

• Fostering deep, collaborative partnerships with Tier 1 and Tier 2 partners to ensure Arc’teryx’s standards and processes are agreed upon and followed.  You will establish technical metrics and scorecards in collaboration with Supply Chain and Footwear team partners and develop a regular cadence of reviewing and acting upon them. 

• Collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders and establishing and driving a footwear innovation agenda.  You will recommend an approach to finding solutions to the technical aspects of all projects, including leveraging teams in Portland and North Vancouver, external resources, and with Tier 1 partners in Asia. 

• Providing a strong point of view on and heavily influencing our Sustainability agenda and our corporate mission to “Leave It Better”. 

• Driving profitability goals through collabo