Senior Manager, Quality Engineering & Operational Performance

For PVLabs, quality is not a back-office function.

It sits at the center of everything we do: engineering decisions, supplier relationships, manufacturing readiness, customer confidence, and ultimately mission success.

This role gives you the opportunity to help shape how a growing aerospace and defense company operates. You will not inherit a mature system that only needs maintenance. You will have the opportunity to design it, improve it, simplify it, strengthen it, and make it more useful for the people relying on it every day.

You will work closely with leaders across Engineering, Operations, HR, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Program Management. You will have visibility into how the entire organization functions and the ability to make a direct impact on quality, delivery performance, and organizational effectiveness.

This hands-on senior quality and operations role exists to bring structure, discipline, and continuous improvement to how PVLabs builds, delivers, and supports its systems.

You will own the health of our Quality Management System, drive day-to-day quality performance, and help improve how work flows across engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, and operations. This is not a large-team leadership role to start. It is a hands-on individual contributor position for someone who is equally comfortable inside a procedure, on a production floor, in an audit room, or working directly with engineers to solve a recurring problem.

You will help ensure that our quality processes are practical, scalable, and aligned with the realities of a growing aerospace and defense company operating under customer pressure, supplier delays, production variability, and strict compliance requirements.

This role is about making the business more predictable. You will help reduce rework, improve traceability, tighten supplier quality, strengthen audit readiness, improve documentation discipline, and create better visibility into where problems are occurring and why.

• Own the day-to-day administration, maintenance, and improvement of the PVLabs Quality Management System.
• Lead updates to procedures, work instructions, forms, templates, process maps, and quality records.
• Ensure the QMS remains aligned with ISO 9001, AS9100 readiness requirements, Controlled Goods requirements, and customer-specific expectations.
• Act as the internal owner for ISO audit readiness across the company.
• Coordinate and manage internal and external audits, including registrar audits, customer audits, supplier audits, and surveillance audits.
• Serve as the primary liaison between PVLabs and external auditors, registrars, and customer quality representatives.
• Ensure Engineering, HR, Finance, Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Production teams remain audit-ready and compliant with documented procedures.
• Maintain audit schedules, audit evidence, corrective action logs, management review records, training records, calibration records, and quality metrics required for certification maintenance.
• Ensure risk registers, opportunities registers, corrective actions, preventive actions, and management review actions are actively maintained, updated, and closed.
• Lead internal audit planning and coordinate cross-functional participation in audit preparation and follow-up activities.
• Monitor overdue corrective actions, audit findings, non-conformances, and process gaps to ensure issues do not remain open without ownership.
• Support Management Review activities by preparing KPI summaries, audit results, non-conformance trends, supplier quality trends, customer complaints, and business process risks.
• Improve document control, revision control, training records, and process compliance across departments.
• Work closely with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Operations to ensure procedures reflect how work is actually performed.
• Support PVLabs' longer-term transition from ISO 9001 to AS9100 by helping identify gaps, building required processes, and improving organizational readiness over time.

• Establish an operational culture that values quality assurance as a performance tool, and continuous improvement as the language of quality and performance.
• Define and implement an Operational Excellence system, promoting best practices throughout the organization.
• Drive change by leading LEAN/CI projects in collaboration with leadership, customers, and employees - focusing on improving business results while preserving our unique culture.
• Collaborate with HR and management for performance conversations, emphasizing monthly one-on-ones and reinforcing performance expectations.
• Build trust-based relationships through open communication with employees, business partners, and leaders, while actively seeking feedback and personal development.
• Coach and champion operational excellence…