Senior Lead - Footwear Costing

Supports the Head of Footwear Costing and aligns with the Brand Costing strategic direction to optimise product cost for footwear. It seeks to maximise margin opportunity by leveraging key levers, implementing costing standardisation and strengthening costing strategy. The position coordinates and facilitates all costing-related topics internally and externally across a range of stakeholders.

• Support the Head of Footwear Costing in driving footwear costing direction, strategy and costing projects, communicating them throughout the organisation and leading team effort to ensure implementation and execution.
• Represent the costing function across the organisation to communicate costing initiatives.
• Provide costing insights and guidance, and manage stakeholders internally and externally.
• Own the costing relationship with key manufacturers, lead high-stakes price negotiations, build strategic partnerships and provide on-the-ground intelligence to inform costing and sourcing decisions.
• Deliver customised costing training to the Creation & Sourcing team to drive cost consciousness and support the team in optimising product cost through the costing approach.
• Contribute actively to margin maximisation through key levers such as costing standardisation, costing engineering, pattern efficiency, material cost strategy and other profitability-related initiatives, aiming to deliver product value to the consumer while improving company profitability.
• Participate in system and process enhancement to drive costing automation and improve process efficiency and effectiveness.
• Act as gatekeeper to ensure costing manuals, standards, processes, policies and the costing system are understood and applied consistently by suppliers, and lead the practice of costing auditing.
• Stay up to date on footwear industry and business trends and drivers to support proactive adjustment to the dynamic cost environment.
• Lead, mentor and develop individual team members, using emotional intelligence to motivate, provide constructive feedback and unlock each team member's potential.

• University degree in business, economics, accounting or engineering, with a passion for numbers and value engineering.
• 7+ years' experience working at a premium footwear brand.
• Technical experience and knowledge of product construction and manufacturing methods.
• Excellent commercial sense and a very analytical mindset.
• Advanced project management skills with storytelling ability.
• Proficiency in both Excel and PowerPoint (PPT).
• Strong price negotiation skills and impeccable integrity.
• Critical thinking, with the ability to challenge the status quo and drive costing projects collaboratively.
• Ability to motivate and guide a team to reach individual and team goals.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills in a fast-paced, cross-cultural and cross-functional environment.
• Fluent in English, spoken and written.

• Sourcing planning experience is a plus.

We are committed to creating a work environment that is fair and inclusive, where all decisions related to recruitment, advancement, and retention are free of discrimination.