​Director of Enterprise Quality

Location: Franklin, Massachusetts

Employment Type: Permanent

Travel: Regular travel across company locations

Vallum Associates is supporting a growing engineering and manufacturing organization in the appointment of a Director of Enterprise Quality.

This senior leadership position will take responsibility for developing and implementing a consistent quality strategy across multiple facilities and business units. The successful candidate will strengthen quality governance, improve operational performance and establish a culture in which quality is embedded throughout the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute an enterprise-wide quality strategy aligned with the organization’s operational and commercial objectives.

• Establish consistent quality systems, policies, procedures and performance standards across multiple locations.

• Lead and develop quality teams, creating clear accountability at both corporate and site level.

• Partner with Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain and senior leadership to integrate quality throughout the product and manufacturing lifecycle.

• Monitor quality performance and implement measurable improvements across customer complaints, product defects, scrap, rework and cost of poor quality.

• Lead root-cause investigations, corrective and preventive actions, and continuous-improvement programs.

• Strengthen supplier quality processes, including qualification, performance management, audits and corrective-action planning.

• Maintain compliance with applicable quality standards, regulatory requirements and customer obligations.

• Lead internal, customer and regulatory audits while ensuring timely resolution of findings.

• Manage significant customer quality concerns and communicate recovery plans to senior stakeholders.

• Identify quality-related business risks and establish appropriate controls and mitigation strategies.

• Build a high-performing quality organization capable of supporting continued growth.

Candidate Profile

• Significant quality leadership experience within a complex engineering or manufacturing environment.

• Proven responsibility for quality across multiple facilities, divisions or geographical locations.

• Demonstrated success developing and implementing enterprise-level quality systems and transformation programs.

• Strong knowledge of quality-management systems and relevant industry standards.

• Experience managing customer quality, supplier quality, manufacturing quality and regulatory compliance.

• Practical knowledge of root-cause analysis, CAPA, 8D, FMEA, control plans and statistical process control.

• Strong commercial awareness, with the ability to connect quality improvements to operational and financial performance.

• Experience leading senior teams and influencing executives across Operations, Engineering and Supply Chain.

• Comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels.

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, quality, manufacturing or a related discipline. An advanced degree or recognized quality certification would be advantageous.

Preferred Experience

• Experience within aerospace, defense, electronics, automotive, medical devices or another highly regulated manufacturing sector.

• Knowledge of standards such as AS9100 and ISO 9001.

• Experience supporting organizational growth, acquisitions or the integration of multiple facilities.

• A record of delivering measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, product quality and cost of poor quality.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to shape the quality strategy of a growing organization and establish a consistent operating model across the wider business. The successful individual will have meaningful executive visibility, the authority to influence change and the opportunity to build a quality function capable of supporting long-term growth.