Manager, Costing FTW
Purpose:
A key player in Product Development & Sourcing (PD&S) in driving PD&S’s vision to be the Most Agile, Most Competitive & Most Innovative PD&S in the industry.
Champion data-driven insights, continuous improvement, and collaborative problem-solving to help achieve the company’s margin ambitions.
Key Responsibilities:
- Track, analyse, and interpret product and operational cost performance; develop strategic pricing approaches and identify opportunities to enhance profitability and business value.
- Identify cost-saving opportunities and margin leakage points, proactively recommending strategies that improve financial performance and drive sustainable growth.
- Design, build, and maintain impactful trackers, dashboards, and reporting tools that provide visibility into margin performance, cost variances, and actionable business insights for leadership teams.
- Ensure accurate, transparent, and timely cost analysis throughout the product development and commercialization process
- Collaborate closely with Development, Materials, Product Creation, and Sourcing Operations teams to support achievement of target costs
- Analyse margin performance across key costing milestones, identifying drivers of variance, emerging trends, risks, and opportunities for cost optimization.
- Provide PD&S Costing Leadership with meaningful insights on margin developments, cost drivers, supplier pricing trends, and competitive benchmarking to support strategic decision-making.
- Continuously strengthen expertise in costing, sourcing, market dynamics, and industry trends while fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning.
- Challenge existing costing standards, processes, and policies by identifying opportunities to simplify, streamline, and continuously improve ways of working.
- Ensure all PD&S operational practices comply with the company’s Responsible Sourcing & Purchasing Policies, standards, and applicable legal requirements, while effectively managing related internal and external processes.
- Role model leadership to foster a culture of Diversity Equity & Inclusion that strives for an inclusive workplace.
Key Relationships:
- Cross-functional teams: Brand Finance, Business units
- External stakeholder: Tier 1 Costing
Knowledge Skills and Abilities:
- Strong understanding of the sourcing industry, with expertise in product costing, financial analysis, product development, manufacturing, or supply chain operations.
- Highly analytical with strong problem-solving capabilities and a solutions-oriented, customer-focused mindset.
- Advanced ability to work with large and complex datasets, identify meaningful trends, and translate data into clear, actionable business recommendations.
- Fluent in English (written and spoken), strong project management and change management capabilities, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and drive execution.
- Strong presentation, stakeholder management, negotiation, influencing, and communication skills.
- Strategic and critical thinker who can challenge the status quo, provide alternative perspectives, and influence decision-making.
- Self-motivated, proactive, and able to work independently while driving measurable results in a fast-paced environment.
- Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office applications; experience with BI platforms, data visualization tools, and advanced analytics and AI solutions is an advantage.
Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in finance, Accounting, Economics, Data Analytics, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, or a related field.
- Minimum of 5+ years of relevant experience within a multinational environment, such as top-tier consulting, commercial finance, product costing, project management, fashion, sourcing, manufacturing, or supply chain management.
- Proven experience influencing cross-functional stakeholders, driving business performance through analytics, and leading initiatives that deliver commercial impact.
- Experience working across global and regional teams, with the ability to build strong partnerships and align diverse stakeholders toward common objectives.
At adidas, we strongly believe that embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into our culture and talent processes gives our employees a sense of belonging and our brand a real competitive advantage.
– Culture Starts With People, It Starts With You –
By recruiting talent and developing our people to reflect the rich diversity of our consumers and communities, we foster a culture of inclusion that engages our employees and authentically connects our brand with our consumers.