Principal Materials Innovator, Apparel Innovation

This role is part of the Apparel Materials Innovation team and operates as an individual-contributor technical leader. You will collaborate across Apparel Innovation, Design, Global Apparel Materials, Digital Product, Product Development, and Advanced Manufacturing, while building external relationships with suppliers, manufacturers, equipment providers, research institutes, laboratories, academia, and emerging technology companies.

We are looking for a Principal Materials Innovator with deep expertise in performance textile engineering, material science, and advanced manufacturing. The successful candidate combines hands-on technical knowledge with the ability to set direction, influence multidisciplinary teams, and transform emerging science and technology into differentiated apparel material solutions.

You understand the relationships among yarn properties, textile structures, manufacturing processes, finishing technologies, test methods, and product performance. You can translate athlete and product needs into technical hypotheses, development strategies, and scalable material systems across knit, woven, and additive applications. You are comfortable operating through ambiguity, evaluating technical and economic feasibility, and determining which opportunities should advance from research to prototyping, validation, and commercial production.

As an individual-contributor leader, you establish technical standards, guide complex programs, and influence decisions without relying on direct reporting authority. You communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical audiences, build productive external partnerships, and use data, modeling, machine learning, and AI-enabled approaches where they strengthen material discovery and decision-making.

• Bachelor’s degree in textile engineering, textile science, materials science, textile design, industrial engineering, industrial design, or a related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience and training
• Demonstrated experience leading textile or apparel-material research and development from technical concept through prototype, validation, and commercial-scale manufacturing.
• Advanced expertise in at least one textile-creation discipline, such as knitting, weaving, or additive manufacturing, supported by working knowledge of yarns, dyeing, finishing, performance testing, and large-scale textile production.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, multidisciplinary technical programs and influence internal and external partners without direct reporting authority.
• Strong communication, project leadership, data analysis, and evidence-based decision-making skills.
• Experience applying statistical methods, computational tools, machine learning, or AI to material design, experimentation, modeling, testing, or decision-making preferred.
• Experience conducting technical and economic feasibility assessments for research, development, equipment, or manufacturing investments preferred.
• Experience developing intellectual property related to materials, products, manufacturing methods, or processes preferred.
• Established relationships with textile mills, yarn suppliers, machinery manufacturers, testing laboratories, research institutes, universities, startups, or industry consortia preferred.

You will set technical direction and lead the discovery, engineering, evaluation, and scale-up of advanced textile materials for sport-performance apparel. You will connect consumer and athlete needs with material science, manufacturing capabilities, and data-informed development methods to create differentiated solutions that are technically credible, commercially viable, and ready…