Principal Materials Developer

KEEN Footwear•Portland, OR

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Materials Developer is the enterprise-level technical authority for footwear materials innovation, development, and commercialization. This role defines long-range materials strategies and standards that advance product performance, design intent, sustainability, quality, margin, and manufacturing readiness across categories and regions. Serving as a strategic bridge among global Product, Design, Innovation, Sustainability, Sourcing, and manufacturing partners, the Principal Materials Developer anticipates emerging material opportunities and risks, leads the most complex and high-impact development initiatives, and elevates materials capabilities across the organization. As a senior individual contributor, this role provides technical leadership, mentorship, and decision guidance without direct people-management responsibility.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Materials Engineering, Textiles Engineering, Product Development, or related field required.
Minimum ten (10) years of progressively responsible materials development experience, including leadership of complex footwear materials programs across multiple categories, season, or regions
Extensive experience influencing global cross-functional teams and working directly with international offices, suppliers, tanneries, mills, laboratories, and manufacturing partners.
Demonstrated success commercializing innovative materials at scale and resolving high-impact technical, quality, cost, sustainability, or supply changes.
Expert knowledge of footwear materials, manufacturing, product development, testing, commercialization, and quality processes across multiple product categories
Deep technical expertise across leather, textiles, synthetics, compounds, components, finishes, and emerging material technologies, with the ability to connect material capabilities to consumer, market, and design opportunities
Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Office, PLM systems, materials data and reporting tools, and relevant CAD or visualization programs; able to define system and data requirements that improve decision-making
Exceptional communication, storytelling, and executive-influence skills, with the ability to translate highly technical concepts, tradeoffs, and recommendations for creative, commercial, operational, and senior leadership audiences
Expert command of material applications, costing, lead times, capacity, minimum order quantities, compliance, sustainability considerations, supply risk, and the commercial implications of material decisions
Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, establish enterprise standards, solve systemic problems, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and deliver complex programs through influence across a global matrix
Strong external network and awareness of material science, consumer, sustainability, regulatory, and industry trends; able to identify emerging opportunities and translate them into scalable innovation.
Ability to mentor and elevate other materials professionals

Responsibilities

Defines enterprise materials metrics, reporting, and decision frameworks that provide leadership visibility into innovation pipelines, development readiness, cost, quality, sustainability, complexity, and supply risk across categories.
Leads the research, creation, validation, and commercialization of breakthrough and high-complexity materials that balance design intent, consumer benefit, technical performance, sustainability, cost, quality, and manufacturing scalability.
Sets the strategy, standards, taxonomy, and governance for global physical and digital materials libraries, ensuring accurate, accessible, decision-ready information and disciplined material adoption and retirement.
Establishes multi-season materials roadmaps and directs the most strategic seasonal materials plans from early concept through commercialization, aligning innovation priorities with category, brand, and business objectives.
Provides technical governance across the end-to-end materials development process, establishing readiness criteria, resolving critical exceptions, and ensuring high-risk materials achieve performance, quality, cost, timing, compliance, and manufacturing requirements before commercialization.
Partners with senior Product, Design, Innovation, Sustainability, Merchandising, and Sourcing leaders to define global and category materials direction, translate future consumer and market needs into material opportunities, and influence product creation strategies.
Authors and evolves material performance standards, testing protocols, development methods, and quality expectations across product categories, using technical expertise and data to raise organizational capability and reduce recurring issues.
Influences and challenges cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders with evidence-based material recommendations that improve product differentiation, quality sustainability, margin, speed, and manufacturability while protecting design intent.
Defines data standards and process requirements for materials within Centric PLM, champions data integrity and adoption, and partners with system and data teams to improve workflows, reporting, traceability, and global information exchange.
Builds strategic partnerships with global suppliers, tanneries, mills, laboratories, and manufacturing teams to accelerate innovation, strengthen technical capability, improve supply resilience, and deliver materials that meet consumer, market, margin, and end-use requirements.