Senior Director - Quality and Product Assurance

Job Posting:

Since 1953, Ferguson has been a source of quality supplies for a variety of industries. Together We Build Better infrastructure, better homes and better businesses. We exist to make our customers’ complex projects simple, successful, and sustainable. We proactively solve problems, adapt and grow to continuously serve our customers, communities and each other. Ferguson is proud to provide best-in-class products, service and capabilities across the following industries: Commercial/Mechanical, Facilities Supply, Fire and Fabrication, HVAC, Industrial, Residential Trade, Residential Building and Remodel, Waterworks and Residential Digital Commerce. Ferguson has approximately 36,000 associates across 1,700 locations. Ferguson is a community of proud associates who operate with the shared purpose of building something meaningful. You will build a career that you are proud of, at a company you can believe in.

Ferguson as an opportunity open for a Senior Director - Quality and Product Assurance. This global role is responsible for the Company’s product assurance, compliance, and quality programs, leading all related processes across the enterprise to ensure that the products sold by Ferguson are safe, fit for purpose by meeting applicable legal and industry specifications and customer expectations, and are sourced from reliable and responsible vendors.

This position leads the Company’s ongoing development of Our Brand product assurance protocols and works closely with the Company’s sourcing and product teams to ensure that effective and robust supplier assessment and product development programs are in place.

This position reports to the Vice President & Deputy General Counsel.

Location:

This role is approved as Hybrid for candidates out of our corporate offices in Newport News, VA, 3 days in office / 2 remote, in accordance with company policy. Relocation assistance will be provided. Consideration for remote candidates will be given for the ideal candidate.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the Company’s Product Assurance function across the enterprise.

• Oversee the management of the Company’s framework for product assurance and quality processes to include the components of prevention, reaction, continuous improvement and control. The framework’s primary goal is to appropriately mitigate risk for all products/vendors in our supply chain across all channels.

• Assure effective systems, measurements, and controls are in place to pro-actively ensure Our Brand product compliance with all applicable legal, regulatory, and industry requirements.

• Oversee supplier and product risk assessment protocols to include audits, in-process controls, and pre/post-shipment inspections, and assure that these processes are consistently and pro-actively used across the enterprise and by third-party service providers.

• Assure systems and processes in place to track and maintain consistent corrective action procedures, including product recall, timely escalation, and customer complaint resolution.

• Develop and maintain key critical metric reports to measure global Product Assurance activities and outcomes.

• Partner with Company QA lab to assure proper material testing, compliance and calibrated equipment.

• Work with Sourcing to ensure that vendor packaging is appropriate to maintain material quality during production, transportation and inventory management processes.

Critical Success Factors:

• Impact the overall quality (real and perceived) of globally sourced products sold through the many different Ferguson businesses.

• Influence Ferguson's ability to drive Our Brand product sales and profitability.

• Reduce customer return rates that are attributed to poor product quality.

• Assure that Company and specific customer quality needs are met, while staying nimble with Product Development and vendor onboarding.

• Ability to work with cross functional teams inclusive of Our Brand, Sourcing, subject matter authorities, and respective business group managers.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years minimum of relevant product quality management experience is required.

• Proven experience in global product quality and compliance systems.

• Able to travel regularly to visit key sourcing locations in the US, Canada, and Asia.

• Quality engineering background is a plus.

• Undergraduate degree from a respected college/university, ideally in engineering, quality, or business.

• CQE (Certified Quality