Customer Quality Manager

Description

As part of Neptune's commitment to excellence and continuous improvement, we are adding a Customer Quality Manager to the Quality organization. This role is the customer- and sales-facing side of Quality, working in close partnership with the rest of the Quality organization to ensure every customer-facing quality matter gets a coordinated, professional response. This is a peer function to RMA, Quality Engineering, and Analytics rather than a report to any of them, and works closely with Sales, Legal/Contracts, and Marketing on customer-facing quality matters.

• Serve as the direct point of contact for customers and Sales on RMA evaluation requests — intake, initial triage, evidence collection, and status communication — coordinating with RMA on volume, turnaround, and disposition.
• Own intake and first-pass evaluation of upfront replacement/credit requests, applying consistent documented criteria and thresholds, and escalating requests that exceed defined dollar or quantity limits for additional sign-off.
• Maintain the master reference of active warranty terms by product line, customer, and contract, including negotiated or non-standard terms, and track expirations, renewals, and discrepancies between contract language and current practice.
• Own the quality and warranty content sections of RFP responses, coordinating with Engineering and Analytics on supporting data and maintaining a reusable library of standard RFP quality/warranty language.
• Serve as the direct point of contact with the customer once an issue escalates, triaging the escalation, pulling in Engineering, RMA, or Analytics as needed, and maintaining an escalation log/dashboard for visibility.
• Proactively elevate active quality issues internally to Sales and Marketing before they surface externally, and partner with Marketing in advance on approved standard wording for issues that may require customer communication.
• Own initiation and project management of 8D (or equivalent corrective action) responses for customer-reported systemic issues, ensuring findings are technically reviewed by Engineering before customer-facing delivery.
• Monitor RMA and upfront request trends by customer and product and track approval-rate and dollar-exposure trends for leadership.
• Flag repeat or systemic escalation patterns across customers to Engineering and Analytics.

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, or a related technical field.
• 3+ years' experience in customer quality, quality engineering, complaint management, or a customer-facing technical role within a manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing customer communications on technical quality issues.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical findings into clear, nontechnical, customer-ready language.
• Sound, defensible judgment in RMA and warranty disposition decisions.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to respectfully engage and influence others across Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Quality.
• Flexible and adaptable to changing priorities and processes.

• Experience in the water metering, utility, or electronics manufacturing industry.
• Familiarity with RMA/warranty administration processes.
• Working knowledge of complaint handling, root-cause analysis, and corrective action (CAR/CAPA or 8D) processes.
• Proficiency with quality/complaint tracking systems (e.g., Jira, Windchill, or equivalent QMS tools).
• Highly motivated, hands-on, and able to work with minimal supervision.

• Typically requires overnight travel less than 20% of the time.
• This role is work office based. Flexible and/or remote working options may be considered and are reviewed/approved by management.
• Periodic travel to Roper Mex and key customer sites required.