Principal Materials Developer

Job Summary

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.

Essential Functions

Description

• 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.

Please note this job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without cause.

Qualifications

• 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.

Any equivalent combination of experience and education which clearly indicates the ability to perform the essential functions of the position may substitute on a year for year basis.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• 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 and travel nationally and internationally for development, supplier engagement, manufacturing support, and material shows.

Travel Required: Yes, 15-20% of the time.

Base Salary: $166,590 - $175,845

The salary range posted for this position represents the anticipated hiring range for this role. Offers are made within this range based on factors such as relevant experience, skills, education, internal equity, and market considerations. This is the hiring range for the position; compensation above the posted maximum is not typically available at the time of hire.

Work Location: Hybrid

This role is based in the Portland, OR area and follows a hybrid work model. Employees are expected to reside within a reasonable commuting distance of our Portland office and generally work on-site four days per week, with flexibility based on business and team needs.

Why Work at KEEN:  Driven by a passion for life outside, KEEN is a values-led, independently owned brand from Portland, Oregon, that’s on a mission to create original and versatile products, improve lives, and inspire outside adventure. Founded in 2003, KEEN launched a revolution in the footwear industry with the introduction of the Newport adventure sandal and has donated more than $18 million to non-profit organizations and causes around the world to promote responsible outdoor recreation, including conservation efforts to protect open spaces. KEEN strives to show the world through its products and its actions that a business for good can actually be good for business. By giving back, reducing impact, and activating communities and individuals to protect the places where we work and play, KEEN puts its values in motion and takes action to leave the world a better place.  

Fuerst Group, KEEN, and Chrome are equal opportunity employers.  We value an inclusive and diverse community. Qualified candidates of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability.