Quality Assurance Lead

Optics11; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Company events

Fresh team lunches 3x/week

Job summary

Optics11 is seeking a Quality Assurance Lead to drive quality excellence across the product lifecycle, from R&D through manufacturing, project execution, operations and customer delivery. You will strengthen governance by implementing robust QA processes, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring compliance with company, customer, regulatory, and Quality requirements.

You will lead Stage-Gate, design assurance, risk management, operational quality assurance, and customer quality activities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Quality Management, or a related technical discipline.
• 3–5 years of Quality Assurance experience in engineering, manufacturing, or high-tech industries.
• Experience with Stage-Gate development, Design Reviews, ISO 9001, DFMEA, PFMEA, CAPA, and internal auditing.
• Experience in defense, offshore, or high-reliability industries is an advantage.

Responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the Quality Assurance framework for product development and project execution.
• Lead and govern the Stage-Gate process, ensuring projects follow defined quality gates, milestones, deliverables, and approval criteria.
• Facilitate Preliminary Design Reviews (PDR), Critical Design Reviews (CDR), and Final Design Reviews.
• Ensure project quality documentation is complete, controlled, accurate, and audit-ready.
• Lead DFMEA and PFMEA activities and maintain the FMEA register.
• Lead quality assurance activities within Operations, ensuring manufacturing, testing, FAT, and release processes meet requirements.
• Act as the primary quality interface for customers and support supplier quality assurance.
• Own the CAPA process, ensuring effective root cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Support ISO 9001 internal audits.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives, monitor KPIs, and report quality performance to management.

Skills

Stage-Gate process

DFMEA

PFMEA

CAPA

ISO 9001

Quality auditing

Risk management

Continuous improvement

KPIs monitoring

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Engineering/Quality Management

Tools

Auditing standards

Job description

We are looking for a specialist to join our team as Quality Assurance Lead who will drive quality excellence across the entire product lifecycle, ensuring our products and processes meet the highest standards from research and development through manufacturing, project execution, operations, and customer delivery.

The role strengthens governance across projects, products, and operations by implementing robust quality assurance processes, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring compliance with company, customer, regulatory, and Quality requirements.

The position plays a key role in embedding quality into the way Optics11 develops products by leading the Stage-Gate process, design assurance, risk management, operational quality assurance, and customer quality activities.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the Quality Assurance framework for product development and project execution.
• Lead and govern the Stage-Gate process, ensuring projects follow defined quality gates, milestones, deliverables, and approval criteria.
• Facilitate Preliminary Design Reviews (PDR), Critical Design Reviews (CDR), and Final Design Reviews.
• Ensure project quality documentation is complete, controlled, accurate, and audit-ready.
• Lead DFMEA and PFMEA activities and maintain the FMEA register.
• Lead quality assurance activities within Operations, ensuring manufacturing, testing, FAT, and release processes meet requirements.
• Act as the primary quality interface for customers and support supplier quality assurance.
• Own the CAPA process, ensuring effective root cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Support ISO 9001 internal audits.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives, monitor KPIs, and report quality performance to management.

Why Join Us?

• Join one of Europe’s most promising deep-tech scale-ups.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Enjoy regular team activities and company events.
• Fresh team lunches provided3 times/ week.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Quality Management, or a related technical discipline.
• Minimum 3-5 years of Quality Assurance experience in engineering, manufacturing, or high-tech industries.
• Experience with Stage-Gate development, Design Reviews, ISO 9001, DFMEA, PFMEA, CAPA, and internal auditing.
• Experience in defense, offshore, or high-reliability industries is an advantage.

Security & Compliance:

You’ll be working with clients in the defense and security sectors, obtaining a Certificate of No Objection issued by the AIVD (Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) is mandatory. This means you will need to undergo a security screening. For more information, please refer to details on security screening.

At Optics11, we develop advanced sensing and monitoring technologies for two critical domains: underwater security and energy infrastructure.

Our underwater security solutions help protect critical maritime infrastructure and assets in some of the world’s most demanding environments. In the energy sector, we develop advanced monitoring systems that enable early detection of issues in high-voltage transformers.