Principal Engineer (AI & Cloud Infrastructure) — On Running
- Location
- Zürich
- Contract
- full-time
- Posted
- 6 days ago
Role overview
In short
In Technology at On, everything we build fuels our mission to ignite the human spirit through movement.
We craft technology that improves with every interaction, enhancing the experience for everyone who moves.
- In short
- In Technology at On, everything we build fuels our mission to ignite the human spirit through movement.
Application process
- Connect the AI platform deeply with On's data platform, identity and access management, event streams, and application ecosystem, so intelligent capabilities can draw on trusted data and act safely within existing systems. Set a High Technical Bar
- Ensure platform components are designed with sound engineering judgement.
- Balance velocity with quality, simplicity, security, maintainability, and long-term scalability, and raise the bar for AI engineering practice across the organisation. Navigate Ambiguity With Pragmatism
- Work in a space where the ecosystem changes monthly.
- Use technical judgement, benchmarking, and first-principles thinking to make durable architectural decisions in a fast-moving landscape. Enablement, Governance & Adoption Enable Applied AI Teams
- Partner closely with applied AI, product, and functional teams as your customers.
- Understand their needs, remove friction, and shape the platform roadmap around what accelerates them most. Build Governance Into the Platform
- Embed security, privacy, data protection, access control, auditability, and responsible AI guardrails directly into platform primitives, so doing the right thing is the default, not an afterthought.
Additional details
- You will work closely with our AI strategy, data science, machine learning, applied AI, and infrastructure leaders, ensuring that On's AI foundations are technically excellent, deeply integrated with our data and systems landscape, and built to serve athletes and customers for years to come. What Success Looks Like:
- You will be the engineering backbone that turns AI possibility into production reality. Platform & Infrastructure Delivery Build On's Core AI Platform
- Design and deliver the shared services at the heart of On's AI capability: model gateway and orchestration layers, inference serving, retrieval infrastructure, vector and feature stores, evaluation pipelines, and the developer tooling that ties them together. Provide Paved Roads for AI Development
- Create golden paths, SDKs, templates, and reference architectures that allow product and applied AI teams to ship AI features quickly without reinventing infrastructure, security, or governance for each initiative. Engineer for Production, Not Just Demos
- Take capabilities from promising prototype to hardened production service. Own Model Lifecycle Infrastructure
- Build and operate the machinery for the full model lifecycle: versioning, deployment, A/B rollout, monitoring, drift detection, evaluation, and retirement, across both third-party foundation models and internally developed models. Optimise Cost, Performance, and Scale
- Establish the practices and tooling to manage inference cost, token consumption, caching, routing between models, and capacity planning, so that On's AI usage scales sustainably with the business. Engineering & Technical Leadership Act as a Hands-on Principal Engineer
- Make deliberate build-vs-buy decisions across the rapidly evolving AI tooling landscape, and keep the platform coherent as it grows. Integrate AI Into On's Systems Landscape
- Connect the AI platform deeply with On's data platform, identity and access management, event streams, and application ecosystem, so intelligent capabilities can draw on trusted data and act safely within existing systems. Set a High Technical Bar
- Balance velocity with quality, simplicity, security, maintainability, and long-term scalability, and raise the bar for AI engineering practice across the organisation. Navigate Ambiguity With Pragmatism
Notes and original content
- You will work closely with our AI strategy, data science, machine learning, applied AI, and infrastructure leaders, ensuring that On's AI foundations are technically excellent, deeply integrated with our data and systems landscape, and built to serve athletes and customers for years to come.
- What Success Looks Like:
- You will be the engineering backbone that turns AI possibility into production reality.
- Your mission
- Platform & Infrastructure Delivery
- Build On's Core AI Platform
- Design and deliver the shared services at the heart of On's AI capability: model gateway and orchestration layers, inference serving, retrieval infrastructure, vector and feature stores, evaluation pipelines, and the developer tooling that ties them together.
- Provide Paved Roads for AI Development
- Create golden paths, SDKs, templates, and reference architectures that allow product and applied AI teams to ship AI features quickly without reinventing infrastructure, security, or governance for each initiative.
- Engineer for Production, Not Just Demos
Questions about this listing
What salary does On Running offer for this role?
On Running lists CHF 101'500 - 154'000 gross per year for this position in Zürich. This is the salary published in the original listing (or, when the employer omits a figure, a realistic estimate for the role and sector) — the calculator on this site converts it to your actual net take-home once cross-border tax and social contributions are applied.
Is this a full-time role, and what type of contract does On Running offer?
This listing is a full-time position. The contract type shown here comes directly from the employer's original posting; always confirm exact hours, notice period and probation length with On Running during the application process, since these details can vary by role even within the same contract category.
Do I need a cross-border work permit for a role in Zürich?
EU/EFTA residents living in the border zone of the country adjoining Canton Zürich can apply for a G permit; the Swiss employer files it with that canton's migration office after the contract is signed. Border-zone rules and processing times vary by neighbouring country and canton, so confirm the specifics with Zürich's cantonal migration office or with HR during the application.
How do I apply for this position at On Running?
Use the "Apply now" button on this page — it links directly to On Running's original listing at boards.greenhouse.io, so your application goes straight to the employer's own applicant-tracking system. Frontaliere Ticino does not collect or forward applications itself.
