Footwear Materials Sourcing Lead

The Materials Sourcing team sits within the Material Supply Chain (MatSC) organization. The Materials Sourcing team shapes the source base of materials suppliers that manufacture the thousands of materials within Nike’s Footwear supply chain. The team is comprised of strategic thinkers who advance our mission of driving outsized opportunity across materials lead-time, cost, quality, and sustainability while integrating strategy and mitigating risk of source base disruption.

WHO YOU WILL WORK WITH

You will partner closely with:

• Materials Supply Chain teammates including Materials Costing and Materials Planning

• Chemical Engineering, both in WHQ and global teams

• T1 Footwear Sourcing to ensure strategies are aligned

• Manufacturing Engineering to support ramp-up and strategy implementation of key innovative materials

• Innovation teams to understand the landscape of what’s coming next in chemicals for Nike

• Product Engineering to drive source base consolidation and adoption of key chemical materials

• Sustainability to support achieving Nike’s FY30 sustainability targets across Foam and Rubber

• Nike Legal, Finance, Accounting to support contract negotiations for volume commitments, exclusivity agreements, and more

• External Chemical Vendors to be the messenger of Nike sourcing strategy and maintain strategic relationships

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We’re looking for a strategic and self-starting individual to build on existing sourcing strategies and stand-up new sourcing strategies for footwear chemical materials. Chemicals are critical to Nike footwear and there’s a need for cohesive strategy across source base cost, resiliency, risk, and sustainability. The ideal candidate will be a team player, someone who is comfortable navigating ambiguity and working cross-functionally, and able to communicate strategy to both technical teams as well as senior leadership. This person will be comfortable thinking outside the box and will work collaboratively achieve results outside of traditional MatSC systems and processes.

You Bring:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, experience or training

• A minimum of 6 years directly relevant work experience

• 4+ years of Sourcing, Costing, Manfuacturing, or relevant experience in Footwear Chemicals

• 2-3 years experience of managing suppliers

• Contract negotiation experience

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and willingness to go extra mile to find solutions.

• Must be comfortable with navigating ambiguity

• Ability to navigate through a complicated stakeholder matrix to achieve results and drive strategic decision-making

• Data-driven decision making skills and ability to parse through multiple sets of complex information to make decisions

• A team player to work collaboratively cross-functionally

• Experience representing an organization to external vendors and being their voice of strategy

• Strong growth mindset

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Advanced MS Excel and MS PowerPoint skills

• Cultural awareness and a champion for diversity, inclusion, and belonging

• Ability to travel 5%

WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON

As part of the Footwear Material Sourcing team, you will be the lead creating and adapting sourcing strategies that serve a wide range of goals across product excellence, profitability, delivery, resiliency, and sustainability. You will partner closely with Product Engineering and Chemical Engineering teams to develop and refine strategy, and ensure alignment across the Nike organization. You will also serve as the relationship manager for key chemical suppliers to message Nike’s source strategy decisions and maintain strategic relationships. You will partner closely with Material Transformation leaders to drive chemical success on buy/sell programs and think strategically about implementing these programs.