(USA) Senior Manager, Product Development- Fabric R&D
About The Position
The Senior Manager, Product Development Fabric R&D leads cross-functional teams to drive product initiatives from concept through delivery, ensuring alignment with business strategies and quality standards. This role oversees product lifecycle management by identifying and resolving issues, conducting root cause analysis, and recommending solutions to meet production timelines. Collaborating closely with internal and external partners, the position directs product specifications, benchmarks industry trends, and supports sourcing activities. The role also involves guiding product strategy execution, managing performance metrics, and fostering team development to achieve operational excellence and deliver impactful product solutions. About the team: Our team combines creativity, technical expertise, and commercial insight to develop and qualify fabric platforms supporting product assortments. Emphasizing quality, sustainability, and innovation, we address challenges with a systems mindset and purposeful action. Collaborating across functions, we ensure excellence in materials, including textiles, yarns, dyeing, and finishing processes. This dynamic environment enables application of leadership and continuous improvement skills while advancing supplier quality management and product lifecycle management. The team is committed to delivering impactful solutions that support business goals and enhance product development initiatives through effective cross-functional collaboration.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Apparel, Fashion Design, Textile Engineering/ Science, Materials Science, or related field
- 8+ years of progressive experience in apparel materials development, mill management, or textile engineering at a global retailer, brand, mill.
- Expertise in wovens, knits, denim and intimates. Yarn engineering through finished fabric including construction, dyeing, finishing, and performance testing
- Proven track record of qualifying mills, developing fabric platforms, and bringing innovative materials from concept to bulk
- Working knowledge of textile testing standards (AATCC, ASTM, ISO)
- Excellent cross-functional collaboration; ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences
- Familiarity with PLM systems, materials libraries, and digital materials platforms
- Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Marketing, Design, or related field and 4 years’ experience in design, merchandising, marketing, or related area OR 6 years’ experience in design, merchandising, marketing, or related area.
Nice To Haves
- Application development experience with emphasis on VBA and SQL programming languages
- Creative design software
- Financial modeling
- Leading and completing cross-functional projects
- Manufacturing, product development, or packaging
- Microsoft Office
- Supervisory
- Masters: Arts
- Masters: Business
- Masters: Science
- Project Management - Project Management Professional - Certification
- Six Sigma - Certification
Responsibilities
- Define and execute the materials strategy for your assigned category, aligned with merchandising, design, and quality priorities
- Build and curate a platform of pre-qualified fabrics drives consistency, speed, and cost efficiency across the assortment
- Ability to translate design and aesthetic requirements into tangible fabric specs for development.
- Identify and develop innovative new materials, sustainable fibers, novel constructions that differentiate Walmart product
- Lead material adoption decisions including fabric platform expansion, mill nomination.
- Own the fabric calendar for your category, ensuring on-time delivery of qualified materials to support seasonal milestones
- Drive cost engineering of materials. yarn count optimization, construction efficiency.
Benefits
- Medical
- Vision
- Dental
- 401(k)
- Stock purchase
- Company-paid life insurance
- PTO (including sick leave)
- Parental leave
- Family care leave
- Bereavement
- Jury duty
- Voting
- Short-term and long-term disability
- Company discounts
- Military Leave Pay
- Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
- Live Better U (Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
