Head of Engineering - Customer Experience

Location: Zurich

Technology

In short

At On, the most exciting and fastest-growing global sports brand, we are looking for a Head of Engineering – Customer Experience to lead the teams responsible for On’s end-to-end Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) digital experience across web and app. This role is central to shaping how millions of global customers discover, consider, engage, and shop with On.

You will manage multiple engineering teams (ICs + Engineering Managers), drive technical excellence, partner closely with Product & Design, and ensure On delivers a premium, unified, and connected customer experience. You will act as a key technology leader within the Commercial Tech cluster and be responsible for providing technical leadership and direction for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of our technology stack.

Your entrepreneurial and result-driven mindset, combined with strong hands-on technical oversight and execution skills, will make you a key member of the core team on which On’s future is built.

Your Mission

Lead with Vision — and with Code

• Guide and grow multiple engineering teams dedicated to building On’s core DTC experiences
• Shape the direction, roadmap, and focus of your teams in partnership with Product, Design, and senior leadership.
• Stay deeply hands-on: participate in architectural reviews, design complex systems, and challenge technical decisions with clarity and purpose.
• Ensure alignment with On Tech’s architecture north star and long-term platform strategy.

Build Premium Digital Experiences

• Own the delivery, quality, and technical excellence of systems powering web and app experiences used globally.
• Drive predictable execution—breaking down work, managing uncertainty, eliminating blockers, and supporting teams through delivery.
• Maintain high operational resilience by enforcing SLOs, incident response standards, and engineering best practices.
• Raise the bar for how we test, deploy, measure, and iterate across the stack.

Shape Culture and Grow Talent

• Foster an engineering culture rooted in curiosity, feedback, openness, and accountability.
• Champion On’s values, tech principles, and spirit through role modelling.
• Coach and mentor engineers and leaders, growing high performers and giving constructive guidance where needed.
• Lead and own hiring decisions, always raising the talent bar and improving our interview process together with recruiting.

Collaborate and Communicate with Influence

• Tell clear, compelling technical stories — translating complexity into clarity for stakeholders at all levels.
• Drive alignment across teams and domains, creating shared understanding and coordinated outcomes.
• Build deep partnerships across engineering, product, design, and external collaborators.
• Contribute actively to engineering leadership forums and cross-functional initiatives.

Connect Engineering Work to Business Impact

• Understand the customer journey and the KPIs that matter — and map engineering investments directly to elevating our experience.
• Operate with a holistic platform mindset, ensuring solutions scale, simplify, and unlock future velocity.

Your story

• Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams (ICs + EMs) in fast-paced, product-driven environments
• A strong technical foundation with hands-on experience across web, mobile app, and customer-facing digital products
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills — you simplify complexity and create alignment across functions
• A track record of delivering high-impact products at scale with predictability, quality, and clear outcomes
• Experience shaping architecture, influencing engineering principles, and driving strong technical governance
• A passion for coaching, mentoring, and developing talent, and for nurturing a healthy, high-performing engineering culture
• Ability to