Director of Quality & QMS Excellence

Confidential; Maryland; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential, based in the United States, seeks a Director of Quality to establish and continually improve the QMS, ensuring products, processes, and suppliers meet customer, regulatory, and internal requirements. The role drives a proactive quality culture to prevent defects, reduce cost of poor quality, and ensure on‑time delivery, including AS9100/ISO 9001 compliance and applicable FAA/DoD/ITAR/EAR requirements.

Travel up to 15-25% for supplier and customer visits. U.S.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, quality, operations, manufacturing, or a related technical discipline; equivalent experience may be considered.
• 10+ years of progressive quality leadership experience in aerospace, defense, electronics, industrial manufacturing, or another highly regulated environment.
• 5+ years leading a quality organization with responsibility for QMS, quality engineering, inspection, supplier quality, and audit performance.
• Demonstrated experience leading and maintaining AS9100, ISO 9001, or an equivalent regulated‑industry QMS.
• Strong command of structured problem solving and corrective action, including 8D, 5 Whys, fishbone analysis, FMEA, CAPA, and verification of effectiveness.
• Experience leading customers, registrar, government, or regulatory audits and closing audit findings.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross‑functional leaders and make sound risk‑based decisions under schedule and delivery pressure.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a quality strategy aligned with the company’s growth plan, operational objectives, customer commitments, and risk profile.
• Establish annual quality objectives, operating plans, staffing models, capital needs, and improvement roadmaps.
• Serve as the senior authority for product quality, QMS effectiveness, release readiness, audit response, and regulatory/customer quality matters.
• Build a culture in which quality is owned by every function—not merely inspected at the end of production.
• Partner with the COO, Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, and Program Management to integrate quality into SIOP, program reviews, production readiness, make/buy decisions, supplier selection, and new-product introduction.
• Lead management-review processes and provide clear executive reporting on quality performance, key risks, corrective actions, and resource needs.
• Own the design, maintenance, certification, and continual improvement of the QMS, including policies, procedures, work instructions, records, document control, training, and internal-audit processes.
• Maintain AS9100D and/or ISO 9001 certification, as applicable; prepare the organization for registrar, customer, government, and regulatory audits.
• Ensure controlled processes for nonconformance, corrective action, preventive action, root-cause analysis, change control, risk management, calibration, inspection, traceability, and record retention.
• Ensure quality requirements are incorporated into operating procedures, engineering processes, work instructions, purchasing documents, and supplier flow-downs.
• Oversee compliance with customer, contractual, statutory, and regulatory requirements, including export-controlled information where applicable.
• Lead quality planning from proposal through design, prototype, qualification, production launch, sustainment, and field support.
• Establish robust quality gates for contract review, design transfer, first article inspection, production readiness, in-process inspection, final acceptance, and shipment release.
• Ensure effective use of APQP-like planning, PFMEA, control plans, first article inspection (FAI), process validation, capability studies, and risk-based inspection plans as appropriate.
• Drive containment, root-cause analysis, and permanent corrective actions for internal defects, escapes, returns, customer complaints, and field failures.
• Ensure material, product, and configuration traceability requirements are met throughout the value stream.
• Approve or oversee disposition of nonconforming material, including material review board (MRB) processes, use-as-is/rework decisions, and escalation of significant quality risk.
• Lead the supplier-quality program, including supplier qualification, risk segmentation, audits, scorecards, source inspection, receiving inspection strategy, and supplier development.
• Establish quality flow-down requirements in purchase orders and supplier agreements.
• Partner with Supply Chain to improve supplier delivery, incoming quality, responsiveness, and capacity reliability.
• Lead supplier corrective action requests (SCARs), verification of corrective-action effectiveness, and escalation for chronically underperforming suppliers.
• Support supplier selection and make/buy decisions with a clear assessment of technical, quality, compliance, and supply‑continuity risk.
• Serve as the primary quality representative for customers, government representatives, registrars, and third‑party auditors.
• Lead preparation for and response to customer audits, surveillance audits, source inspections, quality reviews, and corrective-action requests.
• Communicate material quality issues promptly, factually, and constructively with customers and internal executives.
• Ensure audit findings, customer complaints, and corrective actions are closed on time and validated for effectiveness.
• Support major proposals, customer reviews, production readiness reviews, and new program launches by demonstrating QMS maturity and execution readiness.
• Establish a practical quality operating system using KPIs, daily/weekly management routines, layered process audits, quality alerts, escalation paths, and recurring problem‑solving reviews.
• Deploy Lean, Six Sigma, 8D, A3, 5 Whys, Ishikawa, DOE, statistical process control, and mistake‑proofing methods at the appropriate level of rigor.
• Reduce cost of poor quality through prevention, early detection, process capability improvement, and supplier-performance improvement.
• Use data to identify systemic issues across product lines, sites, programs, processes, and suppliers.
• Develop team capability through coaching, certification, cross‑functional problem solving, and succession planning.

Skills

Quality leadership

AS9100 / ISO 9001

Regulatory compliance

Risk management

Leadership communication

Supplier quality

Process improvement

Audits

Cross-functional collaboration

Continuous improvement

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering/quality

Job description

Confidential, based in the United States, seeks a Director of Quality to establish and continually improve the QMS, ensuring products, processes, and suppliers meet customer, regulatory, and internal requirements. The role drives a proactive quality culture to prevent defects, reduce cost of poor quality, and ensure on‑time delivery, including AS9100/ISO 9001 compliance and applicable FAA/DoD/ITAR/EAR requirements.

Travel up to 15-25% for supplier and customer visits. U.S.