Quality Assurance Specialist

Quality Assurance Specialist

The Quality Assurance Specialist plays a key role in ensuring consistent product quality and reliable processes within a manufacturing environment focused on paints, coatings, adhesives, or chemicals. This role develops and maintains product and process specifications, designs inspection and testing procedures, and supports scale-up of new technologies to prevent quality issues before production. The specialist also serves as a primary point of contact for quality-related customer concerns, leading investigations, root cause analyses, and corrective actions to drive continuous improvement.

• Participate in the development of product and process specifications to ensure clear, consistent quality standards.
• Create and implement inspection and testing criteria or procedures for quality control across products and processes.
• Coordinate the selection and implementation of quality control equipment, including inspection gauges and related tools.
• Review and update standard operating procedures and quality assurance manuals to maintain current and effective documentation.
• Document key risks, controls, and assessments of adequacy to support robust quality management and risk mitigation.
• Create, implement, and maintain comprehensive processes that improve clarity, consistency, and overall quality performance.
• Assist in scale-up studies and the review and verification of new technology and equipment to predict and prevent quality issues prior to the first production batch.
• Identify critical points in the operations process and specify sampling procedures to be used at these points.
• Conduct experiments to identify abnormal product quality, including issues with raw materials, and determine the root cause of problems.
• Research identified discrepancies to determine root causes and provide recommendations on how to mitigate associated risks.
• Work closely with technical and operations teams to resolve and prevent new product scale-up issues.
• Investigate customer issues related to quality concerns, including paint, process, containers, or delivery aspects.
• Determine short-term immediate countermeasures and containment activities to help customers resume production, prevent off-quality outflow to other customers, and contain off-quality materials within the facility and external warehouses.
• Create detailed root cause analysis and investigation reports for internal stakeholders and external customers.
• Analyze customer complaints for patterns and trends, summarize findings, and recommend corrective actions based on identified trends.
• Monitor the performance of quality control systems to ensure effectiveness and efficiency, recommending improvements as needed.
• Report and track significant deviations from quality standards and lead the identification and implementation of corrective actions as part of continuous improvement and PDCA projects.
• Produce reports regarding nonconformance of products or processes, root cause analysis outcomes, and quality trends.
• Participate in root cause analysis of off-quality batches to drive corrective and preventive actions.
• Represent the Quality Department in meetings with customers or suppliers to discuss quality performance, issues, and improvements.
• Travel to customer or supplier locations as a quality representative when necessary to support investigations, relationship management, and quality initiatives.
• Manage and respond to customer complaints, ensuring timely investigation, communication, and resolution.

• Bachelor's degree in Chemistry.
• At least 3 years of chemistry experience in paints, coatings, adhesives, or chemicals.
• Strong understanding of quality assurance principles and practices in a manufacturing or process environment.
• Ability to develop and implement inspection and testing criteria and procedures for quality control.
• Experience conducting experiments to investigate abnormal product quality and raw material issues.
• Proven ability to perform root cause analysis and develop effective corrective and preventive actions.
• Capability to document risks, controls, and adequacy assessments in a structured and clear manner.
• Experience handling and resolving customer complaints related to product quality.
• Strong analytical skills to identify patterns and trends in quality data and customer feedback.
• Effective communication skills to prepare clear reports and represent the Quality Department in internal and external meetings.
• Ability to collaborate with technical and operations teams to resolve scale-up and production quality issues.
• Willingness and ability to travel to customers or suppliers when required.

• Experience with ISO 9001 quality management systems is a plus.
• Previous work with customer complaints in a manufacturing or chemical environment is highly beneficial.
• Background in food industry quality may be considered, although experience in paints, coatings, adhesives, or chemicals is preferred.
• Familiarity with PDCA…