Principal Materials Innovator, Apparel Innovation

WHO YOU’LL WORK WITH 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.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR 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.

What you bring: Bachelor’s degree in textile engineering, textile science, materials science, textile design, industrial engineering, industrial design, or a related field. Will accep