Quality Assurance Manager

About Us:

We are committed to finding smart solutions that enable an intelligent and seamless world. Our success as a world-class leader in technology has evolved from humble beginnings. In 1896, the enterprising father and son team of A.J. and George A. Briggs partnered with S.A. Buffington, a Chicago lawyer, to establish Chicago Telephone Supply Company (later to become CTS).

Today, CTS is a leading designer and manufacturer of sensors, actuators, and electronic components for suppliers and original equipment manufacturers. We have over 20 locations in 12 countries and more than 3,500 employees. Our innovative sensing, connectivity, and motion solutions offer a diverse range of products across diversified end markets including transportation, medical, aerospace and defense, and industrial. We are at the forefront of supporting innovating life-changing technology, focusing on quality to keep people safe, healthy, and happy.

POSITION SUMMARY

SyQwest, a CTS company, designs, manufactures, and tests high-reliability naval sensors, transducers, hydrophones, electronics, and related systems that support the U.S. Navy and Tier 1 partners. The Quality Manager is the senior quality leader for the SyQwest site in Cranston, Rhode Island and an active member of the site leadership team.

This role is responsible for strengthening quality culture, protecting customer confidence, reducing operational risk, and improving product reliability through disciplined execution, prevention, traceability, and continuous improvement. The Quality Manager will partner closely with Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Program Management, customers, and suppliers to ensure requirements are understood, risks are managed, and quality performance continues to improve.

The successful candidate will be both a strategic leader and a hands-on change agent, capable of moving the organization from reactive quality management toward proactive prevention, process control, and sustained quality maturity in a mission-critical defense manufacturing environment.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Quality Leadership and Culture

- Serve as the site quality leader and active member of the site leadership team.

- Build a culture where quality is owned across the organization, not only by the Quality function.

- Coach leaders and employees on quality ownership, transparency, prevention, customer focus, and disciplined execution.

- Integrate quality objectives, risk considerations, and customer expectations into operational and business decisions.

Quality Maturity and Transformation

- Develop and execute a practical roadmap to advance site quality maturity.

- Build sustainable systems for structured problem solving, root cause analysis, preventive quality, read-across, continuous improvement, and process control.

- Benchmark and deploy relevant best practices from across CTS where appropriate.

- Establish measurable priorities, milestones, ownership, and follow-through for quality maturity improvement.

Structured Problem Solving and Root Cause Analysis

- Standardize and sustain appropriate methodologies such as 8D, A3, PDCA, 5 Why, Fishbone, 3x5 Why, DMAIC, and statistical analysis.

- Lead significant customer, supplier, field, and internal investigations.

- Require evidence-based root-cause validation rather than conclusions based on symptoms or assumptions.

- Verify corrective-action effectiveness and prevent recurrence.

- Establish disciplined read-across and lessons-learned practices across products, processes, documents, equipment, tooling, suppliers, and applicable product families.

Preventive Quality and Process Control

- Lead effective use of PFMEA, Control Plans, process risk assessments, mistake-proofing, MSA, process capability analysis, and Statistical Process Control.

- Build SPC capability for critical processes and characteristics, including appropriate reaction plans.

- Partner with Operations and Engineering to reduce process variation and improve process capability.

- Ensure PFMEAs and Control Plans reflect actual manufacturing conditions and remain current following changes or lessons learned.

- Promote prevention-first controls instead of relying primarily on inspection or operator retraining.

Operational Quality and Continuous Improvement

- Lead efforts to reduce scrap, rework, escapes, cost of poor quality, and other sources of operational risk.

- Establish data-driven prioritization of the highest-impact quality and process issues.

- Lead or support Kaizen, variation-reduction, yield-improvement, and cross-functional continuous-improvement projects.

- Ensure improvements are measurable, sustained, standardized, and shared appropriately.

Quality Management System and Compliance

- Maintain, strengthen, and continually improve the site Quality Management System.

- Lead the organization through ISO 9001 certification readiness, implementation, audit preparation, certification activity, and ongoing sustainment.

- Ensure compliance with applicable customer, contractual, corporate, industry, and regulatory requirements.

- Lead management reviews, internal audits, external certification audits, customer audits, corrective-action systems, and quality planning.

- Ensure audits and management reviews drive systemic improvement rather than checklist compliance.

- Maintain strong document control, product traceability, configuration control, inspection, and record-retention practices.

- Support applicable government and defense customer quality requirements.

Defense Customer and Contract Quality

- Serve as the primary site quality representative for customers and applicable government or customer quality representatives.

- Interpret customer drawings, specifications, contracts, statements of work, and quality clauses, working cross-functionally to ensure requirements are understood and implemented.

- Support contract review and appropriate flow-down of quality requirements to internal functions and suppliers.

- Lead customer issue containment, investigation, corrective action, and communication through closure.

- Prepare for and support customer source inspections, surveillance, audits, product acceptance, and other applicable oversight activities.

- Review customer scorecards and quality performance trends and convert findings into measurable improvement plans.

First Article, Product Qualification, and Change Control

- Lead or oversee First Article Inspection and documentation of validation activities when contractually required.

- Ensure First Article Inspection Reports and supporting documentation are accurate, complete, traceable, and submitted on time.

- Support product and process qualification, verification, validation, production readiness, and acceptance activities.

- Partner with Engineering and Operations during new product introduction, transfers, design changes, process changes, and configuration changes.

- Ensure changes are properly evaluated for risk, documented, approved, implemented, and verified before release.

Supplier Quality

- Partner with Supply Chain to qualify, monitor, audit, and develop suppliers.

- Ensure customer and contractual quality requirements are appropriately flowed down to suppliers.

- Lead or support supplier corrective actions, root-cause validation, and effectiveness verification.

- Use supplier risk and performance data to support sourcing and supplier-development decisions.

- Focus additional controls and development efforts on critical or high-risk suppliers.

Team Leadership and Capability Development

- Lead, coach, and develop the site quality organization.

- Establish clear objectives, accountability, development plans, and succession coverage.

- Build employee capability in problem solving, statistical methods, inspection, quality planning, and preventive quality.

- Strengthen cross-functional knowledge through training, coaching, and practical application.

Metrics and Management Reporting

- Establish meaningful performance indicators covering customer quality, internal quality, supplier quality, scrap, cost of poor quality, process capability, corrective-action effectiveness, audit performance, and quality maturity.

- Provide clear, evidence-based reporting to site and business leadership.

- Use trends and risk analysis to prioritize resources and improvement activity.

REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

- Strong quality leadership capability with demonstrated ability to lead organizational change in a manufacturing environment.

- Deep knowledge of structured problem solving and evidence-based root-cause analysis.

- Practical experience with PFMEA, Control Plans, SPC, MSA, mistake-proofing, process capability, and preventive quality methods.

- Ability to review and interpret technical drawings, specifications, quality clauses, inspection records, and supporting documentation.

- Strong customer-facing communication skills, including issue resolution, corrective-action communication, and performance reporting.

- Ability to influence cross-functional teams and develop quality capability across the organization.

- Strong data analysis, statistical thinking, prioritization, and executive-level reporting skills.

- Ability to balance strategic transformation with hands-on site execution.

- Sound judgment when handling sensitive customer, government, technical, and contractual information.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, or a related technical discipline.

- At least seven years of progressive quality experience in a manufacturing environment.

- At least three years of quality leadership experience involving people management, major programs, or site-level responsibility.

- Demonstrated experience leading customer quality, corrective action, quality-system, and continuous-improvement activities.

- Demonstrated experience deploying structured problem-solving and preventive-quality methodologies.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience in defense, aerospace, naval systems, military electronics, sensors, transducers, electronics, or another high-reliability manufacturing environment.

- Experience supporting U.S. Government, Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, defense-prime, or Tier 1 customer requirements.

- Experience leading or supporting ISO 9001 certification, recertification, surveillance audits, or quality-management-system implementation.

- Experience preparing and reviewing First Article Inspection Reports and supporting First Article Inspection or First Article Testing requirements when contractually required.

- Experience with government source inspection, customer surveillance, product acceptance, and audit support.

- Experience interpreting and implementing contractual quality clauses and flowing requirements down to suppliers.

- Experience with configuration management, engineering change control, technical data packages, product traceability, and controlled records.

- Experience with nonconformance control, Material Review Board processes, corrective actions, and deviation or waiver management.

- Experience with product qualification, verification, validation, reliability, and production-readiness activities.

- Working knowledge of applicable defense quality, customer, and contractual requirements, including FAR/DFARS quality requirements or other customer-specific requirements, as applicable.

- ASQ CQE, CQM/OE, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, or comparable certification.

- Experience with DOE, MSA, hypothesis testing, process capability analysis, and advanced SPC.

- Demonstrated success improving quality culture or raising the maturity of a manufacturing quality organization.

JOIN US

At CTS, one of the ways we recognize the value of our employees is through our comprehensive benefits program. Highlights of our benefits program for full-time employees include:

- Health Benefits

- 401K

- Paid Time Off

- Holiday Pay

- Employee Assistance Program

- Paid Parental Leave

- Pet Insurance

- Tuition Reimbursement

Ready to shape the future? Apply now to join a world leader in sensing and connectivity.

United States EEO Statement

CTS Corporation is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer who complies with all applicable federal, state and local employment laws. In order to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals, employment decisions at CTS Corporation will be based on merit, qualifications, and abilities. It has been and shall continue to be both the official policy and the commitment of CTS Corporation to further equal employment opportunities for all persons regardless of, among other characteristics, race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, genetic information, status as a protected veteran or status as a qualified individual with a disability, or any other characteristics protected by applicable Federal, State or Local law.

ADA accommodation statement: If you require reasonable accommodation in the application process, call Human Resources at 630.577.8811. All other applications must be submitted online.

United States Additional Considerations

It is unlawful in all states where the Company operates, including Massachusetts, to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates applicable laws may be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. The Company does not require a lie detector test as a condition of employment nor continued employment.

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