A Day in the Life

As a quality leader with deep expertise in accredited laboratory operations, regulatory compliance, and enterprise quality systems, you bring a passion for building preventive, risk-based quality programs that identify and address issues before they affect data quality, accreditation status, or client outcomes. As the Vice President, Quality Assurance, you'll provide enterprise-wide leadership for the design, governance, implementation, and continual improvement of quality systems supporting a network of environmental, chemical, and defense testing laboratories.

TheVice President, Quality Assurance serves as the organization's senior quality authority and is accountable for ensuring all laboratory quality programs meet and exceed requirements established by TNI/NELAC, DoD ELAP, ISO/IEC 17025, regulatory agencies, and client-specific quality standards.

This role carries overarching responsibility for establishing a harmonized, defensible, and audit-ready Quality Management System across all laboratories. The successful candidate will provide strategic leadership, regulatory expertise, and executive oversight to build a highly proactive quality organization focused on identifying systemic risks, eliminating recurring issues, strengthening laboratory performance, and ensuring scientific integrity, accreditation compliance, and operational excellence across the enterprise.

The compensation range for this role is $175,000-200,000 total compensation, commensurate with experience, skills, and geographic location.

To thrive in this role, you'll be comfortable taking ownership of the following responsibilities:

Ownership of Enterprise Quality Management Systems: Lead the enterprise quality management system by driving quality strategy, governance, and standardized implementation across all accredited laboratories. Champion a culture of quality that ensures compliance, audit readiness, and continuous improvement throughout the laboratory network.

Regulatory and Accreditation Strategy: Lead compliance with accreditation, regulatory, and client-specific quality requirements while ensuring readiness for evolving standards.

Independence and Data Integrity: Ensure laboratory independence, data integrity, and ethical conduct standards across the organization. Safeguard the validity and defensibility of scientific data while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements.

Audit Leadership and Oversight: Lead audit and inspection programs, including internal, client, accreditation, regulatory, DoD and DOE assessments. Ensure audit readiness through disciplined self-assessment programs, root cause analysis, performance monitoring, and sustainable CAPA processes.

Lead Corrective Action and Risk Management: Lead CAPA, risk management, and continuous improvement programs designed to identify systemic vulnerabilities, leverage quality data and trend analysis, and proactively address issues before they result in non-conformances, customer impact, or accreditation risk. Establish a culture of root-cause elimination rather than symptom correction.

Harmonization and Standardization: Drive harmonization and standardization of quality processes, audit practices, quality metrics, and documentation across laboratories to reduce variability, improve operational consistency, and strengthen enterprise-wide quality performance.

Technical Guidance to Leadership: Provide technical leadership across laboratories, ensuring the integrity of analytical methods, data validation, and reporting practices. Serve as a trusted advisor by leveraging quality data, operational performance indicators, and regulatory expertise to drive informed decisions and continuous laboratory improvement.

Leadership of the Quality Organization: Build and lead a high-performing quality organization by developing talent, driving accountability, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Client and Government Agency Interface: Serve as the senior quality representative to clients, regulatory agencies, accrediting bodies, and government organizations, providing authoritative leadership on accreditation, compliance, investigations, and corrective actions.

Policy, Procedure, and Document Control Governance: Lead document control governance to ensure effective change management, record integrity, traceability, and audit-ready quality and accreditation documentation.

Systems, LIMS, and Data Governance: Partner with laboratory and IT teams to ensure LIMS and data systems maintain regulatory compliance, data integrity, security, traceability, and audit readiness.

Crisis Management and Quality Escalation: Lead response to significant quality, compliance, accreditation, and data integrity events, ensuring timely resolution while protecting organizational credibility and accreditation status.

Your Expertise and Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Environmental Science, Biology, Microbiology, or related scientific discipline.
• Advanced degree preferred.
• Minimum 10 years of progressive Quality Assurance leadership experience within accredited laboratory environments.
• Demonstrated leadership of enterprise Quality Management Systems.
• Demonstrated experience utilizing quality metrics, trend analysis, and risk-based methodologies to identify systemic issues and proactively improve organizational performance.
• Extensive experience with:
  o TNI Standards
  o NELAC accreditation requirements
  o DoD/DOE ELAP accreditation programs
  o ISO/IEC 17025
• Successful management of accreditation and regulatory audits.
• Proven experience leading CAPA systems and quality improvement initiatives.
• Strong understanding of laboratory operations and analytical testing methodologies.
• Experience managing multi-site laboratory organizations.
• Exceptional communication, leadership, and executive influencing skills.
• Ability to travel (50%) as required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Quality Auditor (CQA) or similar credential.
• Experience leading quality organizations supporting environmental laboratories serving federal government programs.
• Deep working knowledge of DoD ELAP assessments and data integrity requirements.
• Demonstrated success harmonizing quality systems across multiple laboratory locations.
• Strong executive presence and ability to interact effectively with regulators, accrediting bodies, and senior executives.

The ideal candidate is more than a compliance expert. They are a strategic quality executive who views quality as a competitive advantage, leverages data to identify risk before it becomes a problem, and drives lasting operational improvements across complex laboratory organizations. They possess the credibility to engage regulators and accrediting bodies while influencing leaders throughout the organization to continuously elevate quality performance.

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