Global R&D Manager

For more than 46 years, the Laurastar Group has combined innovation, ambition, and excellence to create long-lasting products that beautify and purify your clothes and home. The family-owned Swiss group’s expertise now extends from ironing and fabric care to hygienic steam systems aimed at creating a healthier home for you and your loved ones. Thanks to its unique Dry Microfine Steam DMS technology, Laurastar is the world leader in high-end steam systems, with over 3 million products sold in over 40 countries worldwide. In Switzerland, where the Group’s headquarters are located, almost a quarter of households own at least one of the brand’s most popular products. Laurastar employs around 280 employees, including its subsidiaries in Germany, France, Benelux and Hungary. Our motivated, well-trained, hard-working, result-oriented employees are the foundation of our success. If you would like to contribute to this success, we look forward to meeting you! To strengthen our R&D team at our headquarters in Châtel-St-Denis, we are looking for our future, Global R&D Manager Reporting directly to Julie Monney, co-CEO, you will lead Laurastar’s R&D activities and turn the company’s product vision into innovative products and services brought successfully to market. You will manage our R&D team while driving current product development and future innovation in parallel. You will also play a key role in integrating AI, IoT and robotics into our products, services and ways of working, in close collaboration with internal departments, suppliers, universities, laboratories and technology partners. Your key responsibilities Manage the R&D teamand turn the company’s product vision into products and services on the market.

Run current product development and innovation in parallel, working with internal and external partners.

Bring AI, IoT data and robotics into Laurastar’s products, services and ways of working.

Be the cross-department lead for product development with purchasing, quality, in-house production, marketing, digital and the other departments.

Help develop relationships with suppliers and partners, from industrialisation to universities, labs and technology companies.

• Supervise the R&D team: priorities, coaching, technical decisions.
• Run several development projects in parallel, from concept to market launch, on time and on budget.
• Own the R&D budget and the product development roadmap.
• Balance the development of today’s products with future innovation.
• Drive next-generation steam: miniaturisation, performance.
• Explore new products and uses in fabric care and steam cleaning with the co-CEO.
• Use AI tools daily and lead their adoption across R&D to design, simulate, test and improve products faster.
• Build partnerships with AI engineering platforms that use AI to speed up simulation and design.
• Own our IoT product data: understand what connected products tell us, and build toward predictive analysis (usage, maintenance, next products).
• Keep a close watch on home robotics and humanoid robots, and explore their potential for Laurastar.
• Work hand in hand with these departments at every stage of development, so that projects move forward together from concept to production.
• Bring the R&D view into product, cost and launch decisions.
• Work with our current development partners and suppliers.
• Bring in new partners: universities, research labs and technology companies.