Senior Supplier Quality and Materials Engineer

About Portal

Portal Space Systems is on a mission to expand humanity’s freedom of movement in space. We’re building the spacecraft that makes that mission possible. From our Bothell, WA headquarters, we design vehicles with the maneuverability, resilience, and adaptability needed for the next era of orbital operations. Every system we build is in service of a simple idea: space should be more accessible, responsive, and capable.

Joining Portal means stepping into a team that believes in bold engineering, fast iteration, and the power of small groups to change what’s possible. If you want your work to directly shape the future of in-space mobility, join us.

The Senior Supplier Quality and Materials Engineer is responsible for ensuring suppliers can consistently manufacture compliant, reliable spaceflight hardware while providing materials and manufacturing-process expertise during sourcing and engineering decisions. The role leads supplier qualification, auditing, development, corrective action, and process qualification while evaluating materials, special processes, and manufacturing capability before and after source selection. This position works closely with Supply Chain, Design Engineering, Propulsion Engineering, and Build Engineering to manage technical and quality risk across the supply chain.

Technical Sourcing, Supplier Qualification & NPI

• Partner with Supply Chain and Engineering during supplier identification, evaluation, source selection, and make/buy decisions; provide technical recommendations on supplier capability, materials, processes, capacity, scalability, and risk.
• Lead supplier qualification and onboarding through technical capability reviews, quality-system and process audits, manufacturing assessments, risk-based qualification plans, and evaluation of critical sub-tier controls.
• Review drawings, specifications, BOM requirements, tolerances, GD&T, material requirements, and special-process requirements during sourcing and new product introduction; identify manufacturability, inspection, and supply risks before award.
• Establish supplier NPI and qualification gates and review manufacturing plans, process flows, control plans, inspection plans, First Article Inspection, and process-validation evidence before production release.
• Evaluate alternate suppliers, materials, manufacturing technologies, and processes to improve quality, cost, lead time, capacity, and supply-chain resilience.

Materials & Manufacturing Process Engineering

• Serve as a subject matter expert for materials and manufacturing processes across the supply chain and advise Design Engineering, and Build Engineering on material selection, producibility, and supplier capability.
• Evaluate material selections for mechanical performance, manufacturability, reliability, availability, cost, and suitability for the intended space environment, including the relationship between material condition, process, microstructure, properties, and final performance.
• Assess metallic and applicable non-metallic materials and product forms, including aluminum, steels, titanium, nickel and copper alloys, composites, polymers, adhesives, elastomers, coatings, plate, sheet, bar, tube, extrusions, forgings, castings, and powder.
• Provide technical oversight and qualification support for special processes such as heat treatment, welding and brazing, soldering, machining, sheet-metal forming, additive manufacturing, chemical processing, plating, anodizing, coatings, bonding, composites, cleaning, and non-destructive inspection.
• Develop and approve material and process specifications, supplier technical requirements, workmanship standards, acceptance criteria, and qualification plans; support evaluation, characterization, and implementation of new materials and processes.

Supplier Quality, Development & Corrective Action

• Establish supplier quality expectations and ensure technical, quality, inspection, certification, and sub-tier requirements are appropriately flowed down through purchase orders, drawings, specifications, statements of work, and quality clauses.
• Monitor supplier performance through scorecards, defect…