Koch Industries

Sr Director, Quality - Optical Solutions

Koch Industries • $200K — $275K *
Manufacturing & Automotive
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, or related discipline required.
  • Minimum 15 years of progressive quality leadership experience.
  • Minimum 10 years leading quality organizations within global manufacturing environments.
  • Demonstrated success supporting high-volume manufacturing, NPI, and global operations.
  • Experience in customer quality, manufacturing quality, supplier quality, and reliability engineering.
  • Preferred experience in optical communications, telecommunications, electronics manufacturing, or datacenter infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and execute the OSBU global quality strategy aligned with business objectives.
  • Lead and develop a high-performing global quality organization across all manufacturing locations.
  • Establish common quality standards, governance, metrics, and best practices globally.
  • Drive a culture of quality ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
  • Serve as executive escalation point for strategic customer quality concerns.
  • Ensure effective deployment of quality systems across all manufacturing sites.
  • Lead implementation of digital quality systems and analytics capabilities for improved performance.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Flexible spending and health savings accounts available.
  • Life insurance, accidental death and disability insurance, and disability support provided.
  • Retirement savings options including company contributions.
  • Generous paid vacation and time-off policy.
  • Educational assistance programs for personal growth.
  • Parental leave and adoption assistance options available.
Full Job Description
The Senior Director, OSBU Quality is responsible for establishing and leading the global quality strategy across the Optical Solutions Business Unit. This role provides leadership for Customer Quality, Manufacturing Quality, Supplier Quality, Reliability, Compliance, and Quality Systems across all OSBU manufacturing locations.

The successful candidate will partner closely with Operations, Engineering, Product Management, R&D, Supply Chain, and Commercial teams to enable profitable business growth while ensuring world-class quality performance, customer satisfaction, and operational excellence.

The role serves as the executive escalation point for critical customer quality issues and leads the development of a unified global quality organization capable of supporting rapid growth, new product introduction, manufacturing expansion, and hyperscale customer requirements.

What You Will Do

Global Quality Leadership
  • Develop and execute the OSBU global quality strategy aligned with business objectives.
  • Lead and develop a high-performing global quality organization across all manufacturing locations.
  • Establish common quality standards, governance, metrics, and best practices across the global network.
  • Drive a culture of quality ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
  • Build organizational capability to support future growth and global footprint expansion.

Customer Quality Leadership
  • Serve as executive escalation point for strategic customer quality concerns.
  • Lead customer quality reviews, audits, scorecards, and recovery plans.
  • Improve customer satisfaction through proactive quality management and issue resolution.
  • Partner with Sales, Product Line Management, and Operations to strengthen customer relationships.
  • Drive robust corrective and preventive action processes across the organization.

Manufacturing Quality Excellence
  • Ensure effective deployment of quality systems across all manufacturing sites.
  • Improve manufacturing performance through:
    • Yield improvement
    • Defect reduction
    • Process capability enhancement
    • Scrap reduction
    • Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) reduction
  • Standardize quality methodologies across Optical Connectivity, Optoelectronics, and Wavelength Management product families.
  • Lead implementation of best practices and benchmarking activities globally

NPI & Product Quality
  • Partner with Engineering and R&D to ensure Design for Quality (DFQ) principles are integrated into product development.
  • Establish robust quality gates throughout the NPI process.
  • Lead qualification activities for:
    • New products
    • New technologies
    • New suppliers
    • New manufacturing sites
  • Ensure successful transitions from development to volume production.

Reliability & Compliance
  • Own global reliability strategy and qualification processes.
  • Ensure compliance with applicable customers, industry, and regulatory requirements.
  • Maintain effective Quality Management Systems (QMS) across all sites.
  • Lead management reviews, customer audits, and certification activities.
  • Drive risk identification and mitigation through preventive quality systems.

Supplier Quality Leadership
  • Establish strategic supplier quality roadmap.
  • Drive supplier development and performance improvement initiatives.
  • Strengthen supplier qualification and audit processes.
  • Partner with Procurement and Supply Chain teams to ensure supply base quality performance.

Digital Quality Transformation
  • Lead implementation of digital quality systems and analytics capabilities.
  • Utilize automation, SPC, traceability, and data analytics to improve quality performance.
  • Establish quality dashboards providing real-time performance visibility.
  • Drive predictive quality methodologies utilizing advanced analytics and AI-enabled solutions.

Global Capability & Talent Development
  • Develop future quality leaders through succession planning and talent development.
  • Create cross-site collaboration and knowledge-sharing mechanisms.
  • Build technical and leadership capabilities throughout the quality organization.
  • Foster a One-Team global quality culture.


Who You Are (Basic Qualifications)
  • Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, or related discipline required.
  • Minimum 15 years of progressive quality leadership experience.
  • Minimum 10 years leading quality organizations within global manufacturing environments.
  • Demonstrated success supporting high-volume manufacturing, NPI, and global operations.
  • Experience in optical communications, telecommunications, electronics manufacturing, datacenter infrastructure, or related industries preferred.
  • Experience in: Customer Quality, Manufacturing Quality, Supplier Quality, Reliability Engineering


For this role, we anticipate paying $200,000 - $275,000 per year. This role is eligible for variable pay, issued as a monetary bonus or in another form.

At Koch companies, we are entrepreneurs. This means we openly challenge the status quo, find new ways to create value and get rewarded for our individual contributions. Any compensation range provided for a role is an estimate determined by available market data. The actual amount may be higher or lower than the range provided considering each candidate's knowledge, skills, abilities, and geographic location. If you have questions, please speak to your recruiter about the flexibility and detail of our compensation philosophy.

Hiring Philosophy

All Koch companies value diversity of thought, perspectives, aptitudes, experiences, and backgrounds. We are Military Ready and Second Chance employers. Learn more about our hiring philosophy here .

Our Benefits

Our goal is for each employee, and their families, to live fulfilling and healthy lives. We provide essential resources and support to build and maintain physical, financial, and emotional strength - focusing on overall wellbeing so you can focus on what matters most. Our benefits plan includes - medical, dental, vision, flexible spending and health savings accounts, life insurance, ADD, disability, retirement, paid vacation/time off, educational assistance, and may also include infertility assistance, paid parental leave and adoption assistance. Specific eligibility criteria is set by the applicable Summary Plan Description, policy or guideline and benefits may vary by geographic region. If you have questions on what benefits apply to you, please speak to your recruiter.

Additionally, everyone has individual work and personal needs. We seek to enable the best work environment that helps you and the business work together to produce superior results.

About Koch Industries

Koch Industries, Inc. is an American privately-held multinational conglomerate corporation based in Wichita, Kansas. Its subsidiaries are involved in the manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment, ranching, finance, commodities trading, and investing. Koch owns Infor, Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Molex, Flint Hills Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals, Matador Cattle Company, i360, and Guardian Industries. The firm employs 120,000 people in 60 countries, with about half of its business in the United States. The company is the largest non-Canadian landowner in the Athabasca oil sands. With annual revenues of $110 billion by 2014, the company is the largest privately held company in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked as the largest privately held company. If Koch Industries had been a public company in 2013, it would have ranked 17th in the Fortune 500. The company was founded by its namesake, Fred C. Koch, in 1940 after he developed an innovative crude oil refining process. Fred C. Koch died in 1967 and his majority interest in the company was split amongst his four sons. In June 1983, after a bitter legal and boardroom battle, the stakes of Frederick R. Koch and William "Bill" Koch were bought out for $1.1 billion and Charles Koch and David Koch became majority owners in the company. Charles owns 42% of the company; trusts for the benefit of Elaine Tettemer Marshall and Elaine's children, Preston Marshall and E. Pierce Marshall Jr., own 16% of the company. The heirs of David Koch, who died on August 23, 2019, own the balance, 42%, of the corporation.
Learn more about Koch Industries
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Founded
1940

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