Director of Sustainability

Ōura • San Francisco, CA

8h • $226,100 - $266,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Our mission at Oura is to empower every person to own their inner potential. Our award-winning products help our global community gain a deeper knowledge of their readiness, activity, and sleep quality by using their Oura Ring and its connected app. We've helped millions of people understand and improve their health by providing daily insights and practical steps to inspire healthy lifestyles.
Empowering the world starts with living our values and empowering our team. As a quickly growing company focused on helping people live healthier and happier lives, we ensure that our team members have what they need to do their best work — both in and out of the office.
We are looking for a Director, Sustainability to lead Oura’s enterprise sustainability strategy and build the systems that will support it.
This is a new director-level role and the first dedicated sustainability leader at Oura. The role sits in Supply Chain because many of Oura’s most important sustainability decisions involve materials, suppliers, manufacturing, logistics, packaging, returns, recycling, and product end of life. Supply Chain gives the role a direct connection to the teams and partners that can turn strategy into action. The role also has company-wide responsibility. It will partner with Manufacturing, Sourcing, Logistics, Quality, Finance, Legal, Marketing, and Customer Experience to put that strategy into practice.
The Sustainability Director will develop Oura’s point of view on sustainability at a company level. They will work with Product, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Supply Chain technical leaders to decide how sustainability should shape the product roadmap, design choices, materials, manufacturing, and supplier strategy. They will set a practical roadmap and define how we will measure progress across environmental sustainability, responsible sourcing, product lifecycle impact, regulatory readiness, and relevant social and governance topics.
This role will suit someone who can set direction, work through details, and build relationships across the company. The person in this role will need to make sound decisions with incomplete information and explain the tradeoffs clearly.
This is a hybrid role based in our San Francisco, California office. The expectation is to be onsite at least two to three days per week.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in sustainability, responsible supply chain, product sustainability, environmental strategy, manufacturing, operations, or a related field.
• Significant experience working with hardware, consumer electronics, wearables, or another product-based business.
• Experience defining and executing an enterprise sustainability strategy with product and technical teams.
• Experience building a new function, operating model, or cross-functional program.
• A strong understanding of product lifecycle impact, manufacturing, contract manufacturing, sourcing, logistics, materials, packaging, reverse logistics, and end of life.
• Experience with carbon accounting, emissions reduction, lifecycle assessment, supplier sustainability, environmental and social due diligence, and sustainability reporting.
• Working knowledge of frameworks and regulations such as the GHG Protocol, EPR, WEEE, RoHS, REACH, UFLPA, ISO 14001, SA8000, EcoVadis, Dodd-Frank, CDP, GRI, or SASB.
• The ability to evaluate tradeoffs across cost, quality, schedule, resilience, customer experience, brand, and environmental impact.
• Strong executive communication skills and the ability to turn complex topics into clear recommendations.
• Experience working directly with Product, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, Supply Chain technical teams, and other functions across geographies.
• Experience hiring, developing, or leading people and building capability through external partners.
• Experience working with suppliers, customers, retailers, industry groups, NGOs, or regulators.
• A practical and evidence-based approach to sustainability.
• Willingness to travel internationally up to 25–30% as needed.

Nice To Haves

• Experience shaping product strategy and adding sustainability requirements to product development, design reviews, sourcing events, supplier contracts, or manufacturing readiness reviews.
• Experience with repairability, circularity, e-waste, recycled materials, packaging, freight emissions, or renewable energy in manufacturing.
• Experience responding to retailer, customer, investor, or regulatory sustainability requests.
• Experience building sustainability data models, dashboards, or reporting controls.
• Graduate degree in sustainability, environmental science, engineering, supply chain, public policy, business, or a related field.

Responsibilities

• Set Oura’s enterprise sustainability strategy
• Define Oura’s sustainability principles and multi-year roadmap with input from Product, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Supply Chain technical leaders.
• Establish a way to prioritize work based on impact, member and brand relevance, regulatory exposure, business value, feasibility, and supplier leverage.
• Recommend the areas where Oura should invest first and explain the reasoning to senior leadership.
• Track changes in regulations, customer expectations, supplier capabilities, and industry practice.
• Set targets, measures, decision forums, and investment requirements.
• Build the operating model
• Work with Product, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Supply Chain technical teams to put sustainability into product requirements, design reviews, sourcing decisions, supplier selection, manufacturing readiness, logistics planning, packaging, returns, and end-of-life planning.
• Define ownership across the functions involved in sustainability work.
• Create a scorecard and review cadence for executives, product teams, category teams, and suppliers.
• Build the team and capability plan for the function.
• Create standards, templates, and training that help teams apply sustainability in their work.
• Reduce product and supply-chain impact
• Build a baseline for Oura’s product and supply-chain footprint, including Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions where relevant.
• Identify the highest-value opportunities to reduce emissions, waste, and resource use across materials, manufacturing, packaging, freight, returns, repair, recycling, and end of life.
• Partner with Product, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Supply Chain technical teams on material choices, durability, repairability, recyclability, lifecycle impact, and the tradeoffs that shape the product roadmap.
• Work with Manufacturing and contract manufacturers on energy use, renewable energy, waste, material utilization, and environmental performance.
• Work with Logistics on freight emissions, service levels, launch timing, resilience, and landed cost.
• Set a clear policy for the use of carbon credits or offsets.
• Improve supplier sustainability
• Own Oura’s supplier sustainability and corporate responsibility program with Sourcing, Quality, Legal, and Manufacturing.
• Set supplier expectations, onboarding requirements, scorecards, risk segments, corrective-action plans, and escalation paths.
• Use EcoVadis, SA8000, ISO 14001, Dodd-Frank, and other relevant standards to improve supplier performance and manage risk.
• Build a supplier partnership program that includes training, data sharing, remediation, and follow-up.
• Lead supplier assessments across environmental performance, labor and human rights, ethical sourcing, responsible minerals, and other material risks.
• Include sustainability performance in category strategy, supplier selection, contracts, business reviews, and partner development.
• Manage measurement, compliance, and reporting
• Build the data and controls needed for reliable sustainability measurement.
• Work with Legal, Finance, Quality, and other teams on requirements related to EPR, WEEE, RoHS, REACH, UFLPA, CSRD-related requests, and other relevant regulations.
• Review sustainability claims, supplier requirements, customer responses, and external disclosures for accuracy and support.
• Prepare sustainability updates for employees, customers, retailers, senior leadership, and the Board as needed.
• Report progress, gaps, tradeoffs, and areas where Oura is still building capability.
• Lead across Oura
• Serve as Oura’s enterprise sustainability leader and senior internal advisor.
• Set the sustainability agenda for senior leadership and help teams make decisions that account for cost, quality, schedule, resilience, customer experience, brand, and environmental impact.
• Represent Oura with suppliers, contract manufacturers, customers, retailers, industry groups, NGOs, regulators, and external partners.
• Build relationships with experts and peer companies to keep Oura’s approach current.
• Communicate Oura’s priorities and progress clearly, using evidence that can stand up to scrutiny.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity packages
• Health, dental, vision insurance, and mental health resources
• An Oura Ring of your own plus employee discounts for friends & family
• 20 days of paid time off plus 13 paid holidays plus 8 days of flexible wellness time off
• Paid sick leave and parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed