Lead - Archive Management

In short

We are establishing our first-ever Product Archive at our Zurich HQ and are ready to transition from vision to reality. We are looking for a visionary Product Archive Lead to spearhead this effort and drive it into its operational phase.

As an incredible self-starter with deep roots in the cultural sector, you will be the custodian of our Design heritage. With the Archive you will manage a dynamic, multi-faceted ecosystem: serving as an internal creative engine for our designers, an external-facing cultural landmark in the heart of Zurich, and a secure digital repository for our innovation. This is an opportunity to bridge our rich history with our future creative ambitions, turning our archive into a world-class inspiration hub.

Your Mission

• Establish the Center of Competence: Define and execute a holistic archive strategy. You will develop the criteria for our collection, ensuring it serves as a rigorous, authoritative, and accessible knowledge base that fuels internal research and preserves our brand DNA for the long term.
• Oversee Physical Stewardship: Manage the full lifecycle of our physical collections. This includes depot planning, organization, and qualification processes, as well as the identification and documentation of previously unrecorded object groups (shoes, textiles, accessories) and long-term conservation.
• Drive Digital & Data Infrastructure: Architect our digital repository. You will lead the implementation and integration of archive databases, ensuring seamless data flow with internal systems, and overseeing metadata standards (keywording, photo documentation) to make our history searchable and usable.
• Bridge the Past, Present, and Future: Partner with Design and Product teams to establish the archive as a functional, high-access creative engine. You will build the workflows that allow teams to search, borrow, and analyze historical product references, ensuring our past innovations directly inform and inspire current seasonal concepts.
• Collaborate on Cultural Engagement: Partner with our exhibition programming team to position the archive as a cultural landmark. You will provide the necessary historical context, exhibit curation, and material expertise to bring our brand stories to life through internal and external showcases.
• Operational Excellence: Manage the archive’s working budget, vendor relationships, and IT collaborations to ensure the archive functions as a high-performance, future-proof service.

Your story

• Heritage & Cultural Expert: You possess a deep background in managing high-value archives, heritage collections, or design museums (6-8 years of experience). You are comfortable engaging with the cultural sector and understand how to translate institutional history into a compelling modern narrative.
• Meticulous & Precise: Your approach is defined by rigorous organization. You thrive in the details of inventory management, documentation, and data standards, ensuring that every object in our care is perfectly accounted for and categorized.
• Systems Thinker: You are as comfortable with database architecture as you are with physical conservation. You can define, implement, and maintain complex systems that ensure data flows seamlessly from our past into our digital tools.
• Collaborative & Communicative: You are a natural bridge-builder. You possess the diplomacy to work across departments—from IT and Finance to Design and Marketing—and you thrive in a team environment where knowledge-sharing is the priority.
• Narrative Driven: You excel at bringing our heritage to life, transforming archival records into compelling stories. You have a unique ability to uncover the "why" behind past design decisions and can translate that historical context into actionable, relevant insights for designers working today.
• Strategic Self-Starter: You don’t wait for instructions to build a process. You are an autonomous project lead who can manage budgets, external vendors, and multi-year timelines with the agility required in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

What to expect

We want to set everyone up for success, so here’s the lowdown on how we hire. Our process is a two-way street – bringing you into our culture, while helping us learn how you think.

Our full process can last about eight weeks from application to offer, because we care about getting it right. These steps explain how we usually do things.

Before you get started, feel free to consider if you want to work with us. Strange question? Well, we give people a lot of space to navigate their day-to-day and that style isn't for everyone. We want you to be passionate about what you do and be sure this is the right fit. Because when skills and passion combine – it creates that 'Wow' moment.

• Step One

  It starts with you...

  You'll start by submitting your application to a specific role. We try to keep this step as simple as possible. We do get a lot of applications, but we review them all. If you're a good fit to the role, a recruiter will follow up with you directly. If you didn't receive a reply, or were unsuccessful this time around, we encourage you to look for other possible matches at On.

• Step Two

  Interview with a recruiter

  What ignites your spirit? This is where we’ll start getting to know all about you and what makes you tick – and it’s your first chance to get a feel for our culture. Chatting with a member of our talent team, you’ll learn more about On and how we work. We’ll learn about what motivates you and what you could bring to the team.

• Step Three

  Interview with a hiring manager

  Ready to dig into the details? This second interview will be held with your future manager and will focus on the specifics of the job. Together you’ll delve into your unique skills and experiences and how they could be relevant at On. It's also a time to assess how you might feel working side-by-side. Bring any questions you have about the job, the team or anything else you might like to know – this is an open forum.

• Step Four

  The Case Study

  What's your style? This task will help us understand how you think, face a challenge and give insight into your novel ideas. Designed to give everyone their best shot, your case study is based on something you might typically experience on the job. This is your chance to show us what you’ve got. So express yourself. Be you.

• Step Five

  The Experience Day

  Your first taste of the Oniverse. This is a time to meet some of the people you'll be working closest with. In person or virtually, you'll get a feel for the day-to-day at On and the people who make it happen. You'll chat with a few potential teammates - the conversations will be as equally driven by the role and your experience as by our values. We believe how you do things is just as important as what you do.

• Step Six

  The Result

  Are we a good fit? We’ll get together internally to share our feedback and decide if we’re a match. We know that job searching is a big time investment, so it’s not a decision we take lightly. It’s also time for you to reflect on the experience – are we the right place for you? No matter the outcome, we’ll give you meaningful feedback.

Step One:

It starts with you...

You'll start by submitting your application to a specific role.

We try to keep this step as simple as possible. We do get a lot of applications, but we review them all. If you're a good fit to the role, a recruiter will follow up with you directly. If you didn't receive a reply, or were unsuccessful this time around, we encourage you to look for other possible matches at On.