At Spaceflight we are creating the future. We are transforming how spacecraft are built, launched and operated and our customers are using these technologies to push the boundaries of space exploration and look at our planet in entirely new ways. Being a pioneer is not easy – it requires ingenuity, creativity, perseverance and dedication. We are looking for exceptional people who have these traits to be part of our exceptional team. If you think you qualify, please tell us why in a cover letter and include your resume.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATION/EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE:
Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college in a related discipline, or equivalent experience/combined education, with 5 years of professional experience. Must be U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident Alien.
QUALITY MANIFESTO:
Any empowered quality manager wields significant authority, but an exceptional one takes supreme pride in forging a culture where they never have to use it. In a poorly functioning organization, Quality can be adversarial, personify roadblocks, and live in an ivory tower of beautiful but impractical theory and elaborate but un-executable processes and meta-processes.
As Spaceflight, our vision could not be more different. Space is terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect, which means unless you are Tony Stark you need quality processes and discipline to reliably create products that actually work. This means we document our work, trust but verify, and employ a distributed quality model, where an intern on their week does not think twice about reminding a program manager to properly gown before entering the clean room. Yet Spaceflight is also fast-paced, risk-tolerant, and constantly looking for how to improve, so we are seeking a leader who understands how to balance process with progress, learn from past mistakes, and empower a team to execute.
DUTIES SPECIFIC TO THIS POSITION:
- Responsible for annual internal and accredited AS9100 audits, including ownership of corrective actions and their resolution.
- Participate in engineering, manufacturing, and failure review boards. Advocate for simplicity during design, for repeatability and continuous improvement during manufacturing, for accurate identification of root cause and swift implementation of appropriate corrective actions after failure, and for ways to make things better even when everything is fine.
- Perform final reviews of products and associated documentation before delivery, recognize the value of paperwork, and demonstrate the return on investment of continuous process improvement.
- Be a confident advocate for rigorous design and manufacturing processes, yet understand that pursuit of an ambitious objective under a tight schedule necessitates flexibility. Know when, and why, deviations are acceptable, and when they are not.
- Create, document, and distribute processes that are human-readable, readily update or obsolete those that are not, and demonstrate how pride of workmanship results in a consistently high-quality products.
- Admit when you are wrong, own your mistakes, and have the pride to not let them fester.
- Assess the quality systems of new and existing vendors, determine when to institute corrective actions to improve supply chain quality, and maintain a reliable and suitably deep bench of approved suppliers in critical fields.
- Develop training for and instruct the company in the quality system. Create and maintain a healthy quality culture that produces repeatable results and never stops improving.
- Maintain the highest ethical standards, especially when challenged from management.
SKILLS NEEDED:
- Experience and familiarity with engineering documentation processes, change processes, and process improvement
- Ability to read and interpret Engineering designs and drawings
- Prior experience working in Aerospace under an AS9100 quality system
- Strong leadership capability with ability to influence the organization
- ERP/MRP experience
- Strong operational, process, and documentation skills
- Self-motivated to fulfill job duties and responsibilities
- DESIRED: Training in Lean Six Sigma or other best practices methodologies
- DESIRED: ESD training or certification