Design Quality Manager

Design Engineering Quality Manager

Cedar Rapids, IA Secret Polygraph Unspecified Career Level not specified $153,377 - $260,743

At BAE Systems, we're committed to delivering cutting-edge technology that protects those who protect us and empowers those who move the world. This commitment requires a proactive approach to quality, integrated throughout the design process. We are building a dedicated Design Quality organization and are seeking a passionate and experienced leader to shape its future. This is a unique opportunity to establish a new function within a leading aerospace and defense company, driving a significant cultural shift and making a demonstrable impact on product quality and innovation.

BAE Systems is looking for a highly motivated Design Engineering Quality Manager to lead and develop the design quality engineering team within the Precision Strike business area. The Design Quality Manager will be responsible for talent development and mentoring, standardizing work including tools, monitoring and control ensuring program success, providing technical and quality science expertise, and working systemic opportunities across the business area.

The Design Quality Manager will serve as an assurance partner with engineering leadership and teams by influencing and providing technical guidance on design quality assurance, APQP tools and processes, influencing new part selection, ensuring requirements are validated, driving a robust change control process, and optimizing processes to identify and eliminate defects early in the product lifecycle. As this is a new role and function within the organization, the successful candidate will play a critical role in establishing a proactive Design Quality organization.

This role will introduce a dedicated, collaborative quality function focused on 'quality built-in' from the earliest stages of design, with proactive identification and mitigation of risks. Successfully implementing this change will require strong communication, influencing skills, the ability to build trust across diverse teams, and the development of strong relationships with key stakeholders across engineering, program management, manufacturing, and supply chain.

• Leadership & Team Development:
  Lead, mentor, and grow a team of design quality engineers. Establish goals and standards of performance.
• Strategic Alignment & Planning:
  Partner with other cross functional peers, quality leaders and team members, and product line area leaders to ensure alignment with business objectives and strategy. Understand industry trends and best practices to ensure BAE Systems develops and maintains quality and technical differentiators.
• Quality Planning & Execution:
  Support proposals, reviews, and project assessments. Review design quality assurance project bid estimates and tailor against contract requirements to develop and execute the design quality assurance plan. Lead quality reviews to ensure adherence to quality criteria and identify potential risks. Monitor and influence product development throughout the lifecycle across programs.
• Requirements Validation:
  Ensure internal and external product requirements are understood, validated, and properly traced to design, implementation, and testing and support qualification testing inclusive of system test set-up conformity, test monitoring, and review of qualification test reports and failure investigation reports. Ensure proper implementation and validation of design changes.
• Test Solution Design and Validation:
  Ensure test strategies/solutions are properly designed to qualify products and factory acceptance tests meet the customer intent.
• APQP/AS9145:
  Champion Advance Product Quality Planning (APQP) activities, ensure risk areas are adjudicated and actioned, and evaluate trends across the business area.
• Design Optimization:
  Ensure that system design guidelines, process and factory capabilities, and best practices such as Design for Manufacturability (DFM) are utilized.
• Design Reviews:
  Influence outcome of design reviews and provide constructive design related feedback on engineering documentation including engineering models, test plans, and other development artifacts and facilitate risk assessments.
• Process Compliance and Continuous Improvement:
  Ensure compliance to design processes, collect and analyze design quality metrics, and cross-pollinate best practices across programs to facilitate a culture of continuous improvement. Develop and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of the Design Quality program and drive continuous improvement initiatives to increase efficiency, improve quality, and promote agility.

Required Education, Experience, & Skills

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering or a relevant technical field with 10+ years of related work experience.
• Experience building and leading engineering or quality teams.
• Capable of obtaining a U.S. Department of War (DoW) secret security clearance with ability to obtain…