Capability Development, Footwear (Specialist to Manager)

About your role:
This role serves as the institutional knowledge authority for the Footwear & Equipment Product Development organization, responsible for ensuring that critical technical know how, SOPs, and best practices are systematically captured, maintained, and continuously evolved. You and your team will be the recognized reference point the team turns to for process clarity, technical standards, and organizational learning, reducing dependency on individual expertise and ensuring continuity across talent transitions, organizational change, and brand growth.
Beyond preservation, you will actively strengthen PD capability by driving the development of technical skills and future talent, embedding best practices, and supporting the seamless integration of new team members, enabling the organization to maintain high performance and drive continuous improvement across all product categories.
Your responsibilities will include (but not limited):
• Knowledge Preservation & Management
• Serve as the organization's institutional knowledge authority, the definitive reference point for PD process standards, technical documentation, and best practices.
• Own the mapping, documentation, and lifecycle management of SOPs and internal PD processes, ensuring they remain current, accessible, and reflective of best-in-class practices.
• Drive standardization of ways of working across brands and regions, proactively identifying gaps and inconsistencies.
• Partner with functional experts to capture knowledge into structured, repeatable, and scalable processes.
• Ensure knowledge systems are designed for continuity, reducing organizational risk during talent transitions, team changes, or market shifts.
• Capability Development
• Serve as a subject-matter authority to PD, Sourcing, and Platform teams (PxM, PSE) on capability standards, technical training needs, and knowledge readiness.
• Lead the development and deployment of technical skill frameworks for PD teams, with emphasis on footwear technology.
• Coordinate and deliver targeted training and development initiatives, ensuring alignment with the capability roadmap set by the organization.
• Support onboarding and upskilling of new and existing team members, ensuring consistent baseline competency across the function.
• Promote consistent adoption of best practices, tools, and methods.
• Embed new ways of working to build a future ready organization, including effective adoption of AI and digital capabilities.
• Best Practices Deployment
• Support to implement enterprise frameworks into practical, functional relevant guidance to PD teams;
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives linked to capability maturity;
• Establish and maintain standardized best practice documentation, toolkits, and playbooks to ensure consistency and scalability across PD teams;