Position Summary
The Senior Quality Engineer is a senior technical contributor responsible for preventive quality engineering, systemic problem solving, and customer quality execution across the product lifecycle in a regulated aerospace environment. Reporting to the Quality Engineering Manager, this role leads complex quality investigations, drives robust corrective actions, and partners cross-functionally to ensure manufacturing and support processes are capable, compliant, and continually improving.
The Senior Quality Engineer represents the voice of the customer and the voice of quality within cross-functional teams and plays a critical role in preventing quality escapes, resolving customer issues, and embedding quality into engineering and manufacturing processes in compliance with AS9100, FAA, and EASA requirements.
Primary Responsibilities and Scope
The Senior Quality Engineer operates with significant autonomy and is accountable for technical quality leadership, customer issue resolution, and systemic improvement. The role focuses on root cause elimination, data-driven decision-making, and sustained process capability rather than inspection or administrative compliance.
Customer Quality and Issue Resolution
Serves as the primary quality engineering focal point for assigned customer quality issues and complaints.
Leads cross-functional teams to establish containment, root cause, corrective action, and prevention using structured methodologies.
Develops and delivers high-quality 8D or equivalent corrective action reports.
Communicates status, risk, and resolution plans clearly to internal stakeholders and external customers.
Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action
Leads complex, systemic root cause investigations involving product, process, or design contributors.
Ensures corrective actions address true process and system causes, not detection failures.
Verifies effectiveness of corrective actions and drives lessons learned into standard work.
Process Assurance and Continuous Improvement
Applies advanced quality tools including SPC, FMEA, Control Plans, DOE, and MSA.
Identifies gaps in manufacturing or support processes contributing to poor performance.
Partners cross-functionally to implement sustainable process improvements.
Engineering and Change Management Interface
Represents quality and customer requirements in engineering change and failure analysis reviews.
Ensures quality risk is assessed and mitigated during design and process changes.
Supports Design Owners and SMEs with quality engineering input.
Data Analysis, Metrics, and Reporting
Analyzes internal and external quality data to identify trends and systemic risks.
Develops and maintains dashboards and KPIs for customer satisfaction and defect performance.
Uses data to support leadership decision-making.
Audit and Regulatory Support
Supports customer, certification body, and regulatory audits related to quality engineering activities.
Verifies implementation and sustainability of corrective actions from audit findings.
Ensures documentation complies with QMS and regulatory requirements.
Cross-Functional Leadership and Collaboration
Acts as a senior member of cross-functional and cross-site teams.
Influences outcomes through technical credibility rather than positional authority.
Mentors less-experienced quality engineers.
Expected Skills for Success
Hard Skills:
Strong knowledge of AS9100-based QMS.
