Sr Manager, Process Quality

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, Process Quality owns the design, implementation, and operation of all quality systems at Blue Current. This role spans from incoming materials through outgoing products, and interfaces with all teams from early R&D to Advanced Manufacturing. The successful candidate in this role will develop a top-notch quality system, and through operating that process will drive improvements to processes and materials to deliver world-class battery products.

Essential Functions & Responsibilities

• Build and manage a team capable of meeting the business needs of this role. Define KPIs for the quality team that align with company goals. 
• Build and manage systems to test, trace, and troubleshoot quality all the way from incoming materials, through to outgoing battery products. This should include vendor validation, IQC, inline metrology, and standardizing test protocols. 
• Provide ongoing monitoring, feedback, and engineering support to identify and solve quality problems with materials and processes across the organization
• Partner with R&D, Cell Engineering, and Advanced Manufacturing departments to define quality metrics, implement measurement and tracking systems, and maintain ongoing monitoring in service of process improvements
• Determine critical-to-quality metrics across the cell development and pilot manufacturing pipeline. Monitor CTQ metrics and deploy statistical process control 
• Proactively flag problems and lead root cause analysis efforts including FMEAs and metrology R&R, and manage reliability improvement deep dives
• Uphold strong safety, documentation, and data integrity practices
• Other duties as assigned, consistent with the scope and level of this position.

Minimum Qualifications

Education

• PhD in relevant field + 3 years relevant experience, MS + 6 years relevant experience, BS + 8 years relevant experience, or 13 years related industry experience

Experience

• Demonstrated experience interfacing between teams in different departments to deliver products, processes, or systems key to all stakeholders
• Proven experience developing quality programs from early research through scale-up and commercialization
• Demonstrated experience developing process improvement programs and quality tracking systems
• Proven ability to build and lead teams in dynamic startup environments

Skills & Knowledge

• Management of a small team of individual contributors in a fast-paced environment with stakeholders across multiple departments
• Mastery of metrological equipment, including aspects of detailed instrumentation specification, facilities requirements, testing logistics with a “high mix” of varied use cases and test conditions, calibration, and repair
• Demonstrated ability to manage complicated programs involving stakeholders from disparate groups (cell engineering, facilities, equipment vendors, senior management, external customers, safety test vendors, etc) to define and complete test programs and ensuring customer satisfaction
• Ability to distill complex and extensive test data into clear reports, through data processing, graphing, and statistical analysis
• Deep familiarity with software solutions for creating and managing quality data, including statistical analysis and machine learning capabilities

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years experience managing teams performing quality systems implementation, process engineering, product quality management, or similar 
• Experience managing inter-team projects with open-ended deliverables and meeting goals and tight schedules in a fast-paced environment
• Education and experience with Six Sigma methodologies
• Experience developing quality management systems or their effective equivalents

Core Values — Minimum Qualifications

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