Director of Manufacturing Quality Operations

What You'll Own

Manufacturing Engineering

• Directly manage the Sr. Manufacturing Engineer – Termination Assemblies and the Manufacturing Engineer – LIN System, and grow the team as volume scales.
• Drive Design for Manufacturability/Assembly (DFM/DFA) across both product lines in full partnership with our internal design engineering team, optimizing for lead time, cost, and quality.
• Own the fabricator and contract manufacturer relationships for both product lines — sourcing, qualifying, and managing partners, and acting as a ruthless advocate for our cost, quality, and schedule requirements.
• Bring in outside technical experts as needed (e.g., cryogenics, welding/pressure vessel, high-power termination, controls integration) to close capability gaps and de-risk critical design and process decisions.
• Own the manufacturing readiness roadmap: successful pilot builds in 2027, transitioning to a production-ready design and supply base that can support live data center deployments in 2028.
• Build a scaling plan (supplier capacity commitments, second-source strategies, tooling/fixturing investment) so the organization can flex production up quickly if order volume accelerates.
• Serve as a technical and operational reference point for prospective customers evaluating our manufacturing readiness and reliability.

Quality

Quality is being built as a company-wide operating discipline, not a back-office function — held to the same bar our own customers apply to their suppliers, and built with the same resilience mindset large infrastructure OEMs now expect across their supply base. This role builds and leads three areas, phased as follows:

Phase 1 – Quality Management System

• Design and stand up the company's Quality Management System from the ground up: a documented quality plan, defined control systems and written procedures for each quality function, and the traceability discipline (serial/lot tracking, calibration records, inspection and test records) needed to withstand external audit.
• Establish document and revision control so engineering, quality, and manufacturing always work from the current released specification, including a formal process for reviewing, approving, and time/quantity-bounding any deviation from drawing or spec.
• Lead the organization through ISO 9001 certification for manufacturing operations by Q3 2027, establishing the quality management foundation and audit-ready documentation this requires.
• Define and own the longer-term roadmap to extend ISO 9001 certification company-wide, positioning us as a certified product developer and a credible, audit-ready partner as we scale toward production — a bar increasingly expected by OEMs and infrastructure customers of their suppliers and partners.

Phase 2 – Supplier Quality

• Hire and build the Supplier Quality Engineering function and stand up a formal supplier approval process: preliminary supplier assessment, an audited quality-system review scored against a standardized checklist, prototype/technical approval, a process audit during sample production, and a signed quality agreement (defining acceptable quality levels and non-quality cost recovery) before any supplier ships production volume.
• Scale part-approval rigor— dimensional data, process flow, manufacturing/assembly instructions, control plans, measurement system analysis, capability studies, and agency compliance documentation — with the highest bar applied to new, custom-designed assemblies such as cryogenic pressure components and high-power terminations.
• Run ongoing supplier performance management: monthly scorecards against defined targets (defective PPM, on-time delivery, order acknowledgment time, corrective-action response time, RMA turnaround), regular supplier business reviews, and a structured corrective action process — rapid containment, documented root cause, and verified permanent corrective action on a defined timeline — with the goal of zero defects shipped in the finished system.
• Build supply chain resilience into the supplier base, not just compliance: map critical suppliers and their sub-suppliers (second-tier visibility), flag single-source and geopolitical exposure, and score bill-of-materials risk by sourcing method, supplier risk, and technical criticality so issues are caught and mitigated before they become a shipment delay or field failure.
• Own supplier compliance and disclosure requirements as they apply to our products and customers (e.g., material certifications, agency/regulatory compliance, conflict minerals and environmental/sustainability disclosures), building the reporting discipline our customers will expect us to demonstrate in turn.

Phase 3 – Customer Quality

• Hire a Customer Quality Engineer and build the customer-facing quality system: a documented plan for resolving warranty and field quality issues (expedited replacement material, field rework procedures, on-site support), customer complaint intake and corrective-action reporting, and a cadence of customer quality/business reviews.
• Ensure we can execute against whatever quality requirements our customers impose contractually — including customer-specific supplier quality manuals, audits, scorecards, and reporting obligations — with the same discipline and rigor we require of our own supply base.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner closely with the Cable Manufacturing team lead to ensure end-to-end system quality and coordinated manufacturing planning, even though that team does not report into this role.
• Represent manufacturing and quality readiness to leadership, investors, and prospective customers.
• Build a repeatable, systematic approach to risk management across manufacturing and supply chain — treating it as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-time setup.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of progressive experience in manufacturing operations and/or quality leadership for complex electromechanical, high-power, or critical infrastructure hardware.
• Direct experience building a manufacturing engineering and/or quality function from the ground up — startup, new product line, or early-stage manufacturing scale-up experience strongly preferred.
• People-management experience leading manufacturing and/or quality engineers.
• Deep working knowledge of DFM/DFA, contract manufacturer/fabricator management, incoming and first-article inspection processes (e.g., PPAP), and supplier corrective action systems.
• Experience standing up a Quality Management System and leading an organization through ISO 9001 (or equivalent) certification.
• Experience building supplier quality programs end-to-end: supplier approval/audit methodology, PPAP or equivalent first-article discipline, performance scorecards, and structured corrective action (8D or similar).
• Experience building supply chain risk visibility (critical/single-source supplier mapping, sub-supplier exposure, bill-of-materials risk scoring) as a proactive discipline rather than a reactive one.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity at an early stage — able to build scalable systems while staying hands-on with day-to-day execution.
• Strong cross-functional collaborator, especially with design/product engineering teams.
• Excellent communicator, able to represent the company's operational and quality credibility directly to customers and partners.

Nice to Have

• Experience with cryogenic systems, pressure vessels, or high-power electrical termination/connection hardware.
• Experience in data center or critical power/cooling infrastructure.
• Experience building supply chain resilience programs (geopolitical risk mapping, dual-sourcing strategy, sustainability/EHSS reporting).