Senior Product Developer, Shoes

Join one of the world's most iconic luxury fashion houses and shape the future of sustainable luxury footwear.

Senior Product Developer, Shoes

Introduction

At Burberry, we believe creativity opens spaces. Our purpose is to unlock the power of imagination to push boundaries and open new possibilities for our people, our customers and our communities. This is the core belief that has guided Burberry since it was founded in 1856 and is central to how we operate as a company today.

We aim to provide an environment for creative minds from different backgrounds to thrive, bringing a wide range of skills and experiences to everything we do. As a purposeful, values-driven brand, we are committed to being a force for good in the world as well, creating the next generation of sustainable luxury for customers, driving industry change and championing our communities.

Job Purpose

This position will deliver the end to end product development process in their respective category within Burberry's Product Development function. Acting as an ambassador for Burberry, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation and collaboration and operate as true product specialists with internal teams and vendors.

Responsibilities

• Managing the Developers and Assistants workload and responsibilities in their respective categories.
• Maintaining a close relationship with Technical team throughout the development process and highlighting any issues together with providing solutions, proactively and collaboratively.
• Maintaining a close relationship with the RM team throughout the development process, ensuring that RM are fit based on Designs requests.
• Working together with the costing team on development progress and costing targets.
• Working together with the merchandising team and making sure the range plan is adhered to for costs and for styles.
• Building and maintaining a close working partnership with Design Team. Acting as the development partner for design, attending fittings, providing feedback, brainstorming ideas and solutions to ensure the design vision is translated into product.
• Responsible for building and maintaining effective working relationships with vendors, developing a strong working knowledge of vendor capability and availability to meet demands. This includes negotiating on costs as well as aesthetic changes to ensure design vision is maintained.
• Implementing and managing the critical path from concept to pre-production with design and manufacturers. Ensuring deadlines are adhered to and follow up on all prototype/sample issues to resolve and drive to completion. Identifying, calling out and making recommendations to mitigate any risks/challenges identified at all stages.
• Responsible for delivering prototypes and samples on time, to the quality standard, and within cost price range, to achieve target margin.
• Responsible for ensuring functionality (including consistency and standardisation) and ensuring products that are developed are fit for purpose for the customer, brand and business. This includes ongoing risk assessment during the development process and proactivity in taking actions as a result.
• Responsible for collaborating with the Product Engineering teams while developing the collections for product testing to relevant standards, leveraging their technical knowledge and negotiating any aesthetic changes to protect the design vision.
• Accountable for ensuring PLM is kept updated with 100% accuracy at all times.

Personal Profile

• Ability to work in partnership with Senior Designers, understanding and interpreting their creative aesthetic and design vision and translating this to teams and vendors.
• Ability to work with deadlines and independence in managing the workload and identifying the priorities.
• Technical capability and product knowledge with ability to confidently influence the Design team and provide on the spot solutions in:
• specifics on materials and leather techniques, footwear structures and construction.
• Experience managing vendor relationships, delivering clear briefs and leveraging relationships to meet demands.
• Proactivity is key.
• Critical path management ensuring collections are delivered on time, identifying, calling out and making recommendations to mitigate any risks/challenges identified.
• Able to manage within a budget with commercial awareness and understanding of product cost, achieving a balance between creativity and commercial implications throughout the product development process.
• Demonstrated experience working on site with vendors and operational knowledge of factories, delivering clear briefs and leveraging relationships and availability to meet demands.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to negotiate with credibility, share information effectively, and work confidently with cross functional teams.
• In depth knowledge of fashion and products in relevant category –'fashion sensibility' - knowledge of trends, the market, the luxury consumer and peer awareness.
• Computer skills: PLM, Excel, Adobe Package is not essential but would be a plus.
• Knowledge of Italian Language is mandatory.

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Burberry is an Equal Opportunities Employer and as such, treats all applications equally and recruits purely on the basis of skills and experience.