Senior Manager Product Safety and Reliability

Senior Manager Product Safety and Reliability

Description -

This role is responsible for providing direct leadership for a global team of individual contributors and contractors across product safety and product reliability engineering disciplines. The role oversees the full lifecycle of issue management related to potential product safety issues, recall programs, and field reliability performance.

This leader defines and drives a holistic safety and reliability strategy, integrating reactive issue management with proactive Design for Reliability (DFR), life modeling insights, and validation strategies to reduce failures before they reach customers.

The role leads cross-functional initiatives spanning R&D, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and field support, and may include interaction with customers and regulatory agencies.

Additionally, this function works with external suppliers and ODM partners to ensure reliability standards, validation methods, and corrective actions are executed effectively. Responsibilities include auditing processes, influencing product validation strategies across lifecycle phases (pre-manufacturing through post-launch), and leading anti-counterfeiting and brand protection efforts.

We are seeking a multi-skilled leader capable of managing both escalation-driven safety response and proactive reliability engineering systems. This includes ensuring timely failure analysis, driving data-driven corrective actions, managing customer escalations, and delivering clear executive communications.

Key Responsibilities

1. People Leadership & Organization Development

• Lead, develop, and mentor a global team of safety specialists, reliability engineers, and contractors

• Build organizational capability in failure analysis, DFR, reliability modeling, and field performance management

• Establish clear roles, standards, and career pathways across safety and reliability functions

• Manage resources supporting both product escalations and long-term reliability engineering initiatives

2. Safety & Reliability Strategy

• Define and execute an integrated product safety and reliability strategy across the product lifecycle

• Partner with R&D and engineering to embed Design for Reliability (DFR) principles early in development

• Establish reliability goals, validation approaches, and alignment with business and customer expectations

• Drive continuous improvement of safety, reliability standards, processes, and governance

3. Root Cause, Failure Analysis & Reliability Insights

• Oversee team execution of failure analysis and root cause investigations across safety incidents and reliability failures

• Ensure application of statistical analysis, life modeling insights, and field data to identify systemic issues

• Drive closure of corrective actions and verification of effectiveness

• Ensure turnaround times meet established goals while maintaining technical rigor

4. Field Performance & Reliability Analytics

• Lead analysis of field data, warranty trends, and failure rates to identify emerging risks and improvement opportunities

• Translate complex reliability data into clear business risks, cost impacts, and prioritization inputs

• Partner with engineering teams to proactively eliminate high-risk failure modes

5. Recall & Escalation Management

• Lead team responsible for management of active recall programs and safety escalations

• Drive investigation and preparation of potential recall actions in coordination with regulatory requirements

• Ensure structured escalation management processes and executive communication

6. Product Improvement & Preventive Action

• Provide data-driven insights to influence product design, validation testing, and supplier performance

• Lead cross-functional initiatives to improve product robustness, reduce warranty cost, and enhance customer experience

• Ensure lessons learned from field issues are systematically fed back into design and qualification processes

7. Supplier & ODM Reliability Governance

• Partner with procurement, supply chain, and ODMs to ensure adherence to reliability standards

• Oversee supplier capability assessments, audits, and corrective action execution

• Influence reliability requirements in supplier contracts and validation expectations

8. Validation & Test Strategy Oversight<