Full Job Description
Product Quality Leader - Customer Impact & Reliability Excellence
The Product Quality Leader owns the organization's response to product quality issues that affect customers. The role sets priorities, drives escalation and resolution, and establishes preventive systems that reduce recurrence and strengthen product reliability.
Working across Product Management, Engineering, Manufacturing Quality, Supply Chain, Customer Support, Services, and Executive Leadership, the role advances organizational quality performance through proactive risk identification, defect prevention, systemic process weakness correction and continuous improvement. Success is reflected in fewer customer disruptions, stronger product quality and reliability performance, and the organization's ability to deliver consistently superior customer product experience.
Key Responsibilities
The role's responsibilities fall into four areas: preventing quality risks, leading the response to customer-impacting events, strengthening quality governance and accountability, and embedding lessons learned into product and process standards.
• Champion a prevention-focused quality culture by ensuring quality is designed, validated, and monitored throughout the product lifecycle.
• Proactively validate quality controls to identify and mitigate risks before they result in customer impact
• Develop and execute a zero-tolerance strategy for delivered product startup and launch-related quality issues.
• Develop and maintain standardized quality performance metrics and KPIs across all production facilities.
• Institutionalize problem-solving (e.g. 9-Step) and knowledge-sharing processes by embedding lessons learned into standards, procedures, and operating practices.
• Define clear ownership, accountability, and performance expectations for quality-related deliverables.
• Identify and eliminate process deficiencies that contribute to recurring product quality and reliability issues and verify that the resulting controls prevent recurrence.
• Establish governance, escalation criteria, and response protocols for critical product quality incidents.
• Lead rapid containment, mitigation, communication, and resolution efforts for customer-impacting quality events.
• Ensure corrective actions address root causes and drive sustainable, systemic improvements.
• Establish and maintain a Repeat Issue Prevention Program focused on reducing the recurrence of customer-impacting defects.
• Partner with Engineering and Product Management to prioritize quality and reliability risks within product roadmaps and lifecycle planning, preventing known defect patterns from reoccurring in future New Product Development (NPD) releases.
• Ensure Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), fault-tree analysis, and reliability risk assessments are embedded as standard practices for critical products and services.
Success Measures
• Reduction in customer-impacting product incidents.
• Faster resolution of high-severity customer escalations.
• Improved customer satisfaction and retention.
• Reduction in recurring quality issues.
• Increased product reliability and field performance.
• Effective execution of corrective and preventive actions.
• Improved organizational accountability and quality culture.
• Continuous and accretive recognition of progress and effectiveness as captured in Employee Engagement surveys.
Key Competencies
• Customer Advocacy
• Continuous Improvement Mindset
• Change Leadership
• Data-Driven Decision Making
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Root Cause Analysis
• Quality Systems Management
• Strategic Thinking
• Excellent Communication and Executive Presence
Preferred Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Quality Management, Computer Science, Business, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience in product quality, engineering, technical support, or operational leadership roles.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing cross-functional teams.
• Proven experience leading resolution of critical customer-impacting issues.
• Strong expertise in quality management systems, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement methodologies.
• Knowledge of reliability engineering, incident management, and customer support operations.
• Experience working cross functionally and directly with executive leadership and strategic customers.
• Demonstrated success in driving organizational change and accountability.
