Chief Advanced Development Officer

About Us 

SharkNinja is a global product design and technology company, with a diversified portfolio of 5-star rated lifestyle solutions that positively impact people’s lives in homes around the world. Powered by two trusted, global brands, Shark and Ninja, the company has a proven track record of bringing disruptive innovation to market, and developing one consumer product after another has allowed SharkNinja to enter multiple product categories, driving significant growth and market share gains. Headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts with more than 3,300+ associates, the company’s products are sold at key retailers, online and offline, and through distributors around the world.  

Chief Advanced Development Officer
Location: Needham, Massachusetts, USA
Reports to: Chief Design Officer (CDO)

Position Overview

At SharkNinja, we relentlessly innovate to shape the future of consumer experiences.

We are seeking a visionary Chief Advanced Development Officer (CADO) to architect and lead a global product design organization that defines the future of our Shark® and Ninja® brands through early-stage product design engineering architecture, breakthrough technologies, and disruptive concept development. 

As the CADO, you will be a hands-on design leader who leads through example in driving a bold innovation agenda, overseeing and actively exploring new concepts all the way through the front-end innovation process, ensuring a seamless transition into detail engineering and full commercialization.  Having an inventorship mindset is mandatory.

This isn’t just a design leadership role—it’s about leading the spark behind SharkNinja’s next generation of iconic products. You'll be the creative catalyst shaping what’s next, helping teams turn blue-sky thinking into tangible, consumer-loved innovations that define categories. Your team will shape the early concept architecture that eventually fuels mass production through our NPD (New Product Development) pipeline.

You will inspire world-class design teams, governing and driving the innovation process to deliver transformative solutions to a cross-functional business that create category-defining consumer experiences.

SharkNinja are seeking a true Product Design leader who has a track record delivering world class consumer product design. The role will direct and govern the design process of consumer electric concept and design architectures, from the early conception and ideation stage to design platforms which will become the next generation of SharkNinja products.

The role requires candidates to work seamlessly with the Global team of Product Developers to deliver consumer-focused concept product designs and lead their team through each development phase, which can then be taken to the New Product Design group for mass production.

The expectation is for a natural and effective communicator, capable of reducing abstract concepts to reality quickly, in a format easily digestible by senior management.

The successful individual must have the ability to lead a team in quickly generating visual and physical definitions of new products which convey key attributes of function and layout.

The ideal candidate is a designer at heart, with deep engineering and design credentials, a natural flair for storytelling, and a relentless passion for solving consumer problems in inventive, inspiring ways.

What You’ll Do

Be Driven by Design to develop products that change customer behaviors, exceed expectations, lead markets and build an emotional connection with the Brand.

Be the executive leader of SharkNinja’s Front-End Innovation team, responsible for building a global team of concept creators, design storytellers, and inventors across all product categories.

Inspire the cross functional business with robust visual and prototype methodologies to sell ideas and excite cross-functional partners and senior executives.

Be an executive storyteller – capable of pitching future-focused concepts in a way that connects emotionally and drives alignment across the business.

Partner with the executive Product Development, Marketing, Creative and Growth teams to ensure early concepts are rooted in a strong, scalable product strategy that WOW!

Cultivate and grow a high-energy environment and global organization where curiosity, creativity, and invention are celebrated and continuously pushed forward.

Maintain a consumer-obsessed mindset, with a focus on solving problems others either couldn’t or didn’t know they had to solve.

Experience

• Proven track record of taking consumer concept ideas through a selection process and into embodiment phases
• The ideal candidate will have a degree-level qualification, ideally in Product Design Engineering, Industrial Design with significant product design content.
• Minimum of 15+ years’ experience in an industrial/product design environment.
• Consumer goods experience in a household appliance space strongly preferred.
• Strong leadership experience with excellent communication skills and inspirational leadership style.
• Proven structured approach to creative problem-solving, and an expert understanding of the principles of industrial design and mechanical engineering
• Extensive experience in areas of high-volume plastic injection molding, sheet metal, die casting etc.
• Strong understanding of product design selection processes and a proven track record of invention, as well as mechanical design industrial development.
• Experience of high-volume manufacturing, design for manufacturing and manufacturing engineering and process control.
• Positive attitude to continuous personal development, both individually and across the team.
• Self-starter, driven and energetic.

Why This Role Matters

This role is more than just Product Design Leadership; it defines the future of SharkNinja product success and spearheads our ability to accelerate execution of consumer centric innovation.  The Chief AD Officer leads the narrative into the business on future product design development and drives the next generation our concept roadmap.