Associate Director, Quality; Key Customer

Overview

We’re looking for people who put their innovation to work to advance our success – and their own. Join an organization that ensures a more secure world through connecting and protecting our customers with inventive electrical solutions. The Associate Director of Quality, Key Customer is a strategic quality leader responsible for shaping and delivering the Data Center Solutions quality strategy while serving as the primary quality owner for a critical, high impact customer.

This role ensures products, processes, suppliers, and quality systems consistently meet or exceed customer, regulatory, and enterprise requirements. The role spans enterprise quality strategy and governance, multi‑site operational execution, and deep customer partnership. The Associate Director of Quality drives quality excellence across Data Center Solutions business units, manufacturing sites, and supplier networks, serving as both a strategic advisor to leadership and hands on leader during critical issues, audits, and growth initiatives.

This position acts as a gatekeeper for growth—ensuring quality systems, talent, and processes scale effectively with business expansion—while embedding a strong culture of prevention, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Develop and deploy a unified Data Center Solutions quality vision, strategy, and governance model aligned with enterprise objectives. Establish and harmonize quality standards, metrics, policies, and procedures across sites and segments. Provide regular quality performance insights, risk assessments, and recommendations to executive leadership. Champion a consistent, enterprise‑wide quality culture focused on prevention, transparency, and operational rigor.

Serve as the primary quality point of contact for a strategically critical key customer. Build trusted, collaborative relationships with customer quality, engineering, procurement, and leadership teams. Represent the organization in customer audits, business reviews, escalations, and governance forums. Translate customer requirements into internal quality strategies, priorities, and execution plans. Own customer quality key performance indicators, including PPM, complaints, corrective actions, audit outcomes, and field performance.

Lead the enterprise QMS framework to ensure compliance with ISO 9001 and all applicable customer and industry standards. Drive QMS alignment and integration with digital quality systems and enterprise platforms. Oversee global internal, supplier, and customer audit programs, ensuring timely and effective closure of CAPAs. Ensure disciplined change management, validation, and documentation practices across the organization.

Drive structured problem solving and root cause analysis to resolve chronic and systemic quality issues. Partner with Engineering, Operations, Logistics, and Supply Chain to embed quality into product design, NPI, and manufacturing processes. Lead and govern APQP, PPAP, FMEA, SPC, control plans, and validation activities. Strengthen inspection strategies, control plans, and risk‑based verification processes.

Develop and lead the enterprise supplier quality strategy in partnership with Sourcing and Procurement. Oversee supplier qualification, audits, NCR/CAPA management, and ongoing performance monitoring. Direct incoming quality control (IQC) and receiving inspection strategies to reduce escapes while optimizing dock‑to‑stock cycle times. Collaborate with suppliers and engineering teams during NPI to ensure production readiness and specification compliance.

Lead large‑scale, data‑driven continuous improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma and related methodologies. Establish and manage enterprise dashboards for defects, cost of poor quality, audit performance, and customer metrics. Identify and deploy digital quality tools to advance analytics, monitoring, and predictive quality capabilities. Proactively identify…