Director, Supplier Quality

Description: Quantum Scape is on a mission to transform energy storage with solid-state lithium-metal battery technology. The company’s next-generation batteries are designed to enable greater energy density, faster charging and enhanced safety to support the transition away from legacy energy sources toward a lower carbon future.

About the team
:
The Quality & Reliability organization is a five-pillar team – Quality Systems, Supplier Quality, Manufacturing Quality, Product Quality & Reliability, and Customer Quality – built to drive end-to-end quality ownership from supplier through process to product to customer. We are a tightly integrated group of quality engineers, reliability engineers, auditors, and methodologists working alongside Manufacturing Operations, Microscopy & FA, and Facilities to enable Quantum Scape’s transition from R&D to high-volume commercial production.

The team prides itself on bottoms-up accountability, prevention over detection, and surfacing problems early so they get fixed once.

What we need: The Quality & Reliability organization is seeking a Director, Supplier Quality to own the Supplier Quality pillar and push quality upstream – to the source. Today, supplier quality at Quantum Scape is largely limited to incoming inspection (IQC) at our dock; this role exists to change that. This leader will build a supplier base that ships first-time-right material, drive incoming defects toward zero, and eliminate the material and labor waste that comes from catching problems at our dock instead of at the supplier’s line.

The core mandate is to move quality left: qualify suppliers rigorously, transfer clear defect and acceptance requirements to them, and hold them accountable for meeting those requirements before material ever reaches Quantum Scape. As we move from R&D into high-volume commercial production and bring on strategic manufacturing partners, this leader will own a seamless quality handoff with those partners. We are looking for a proven track record applying lean principles to supplier quality – someone who thinks in terms of waste elimination, flow, and prevention, not inspection.

If you have driven measurable supplier quality improvements at scale in regulated, high-volume manufacturing, we’d like to hear from you.

As Director, Supplier Quality, you will own the supplier quality function end-to-end – from supplier selection and qualification through PPAP, incoming quality control, and ongoing supplier performance management. You will bring lean and waste-elimination discipline as the operating logic of the function: every dollar of scrap, every hour of sort and rework, and every incoming inspection we can retire because a supplier owns quality at its source is a direct unlock for getting more shippable output from the same headcount and infrastructure.

You will partner tightly with Manufacturing Quality – whose Product Quality & Reliability characterization and specs define what good looks like – to translate those specs into supplier and floor requirements, and with Supply Chain to make quality a first-class criterion in sourcing decisions. Critically, you will be a culture leader who installs operational discipline at our suppliers and inside your own team, shifting from detection to prevention and from status reporting to problem solving, and you will do it through clear, concise, direct communication that drives alignment and makes ownership unambiguous at every handoff.

What You’ll do:

• Own the Supplier Quality pillar end-to-end – supplier qualification and approval, supplier PFMEA, APQP and PPAP execution, supplier audits and scorecards, and supplier excursion / corrective-action (8D) management – driving incoming defects toward zero at the source
• Set and continuously improve IQC strategy and dock-to-stock qualification – deploying a risk-based verification model that reduces non-conforming material escapes while retiring redundant incoming inspection as supplier capability is proven
• Embed and co-locate supplier development engineers at key suppliers to drive APQP, PPAP, and supplier PFMEA at the source before parts arrive – moving Quantum Scape from…