hypersonica-prod - Head of Quality
Requirements
• A senior quality leader with substantial experience in aerospace, defence, complex hardware, or another high-consequence engineering environment. • Proven at building or fundamentally reshaping a Quality Management System, ideally through AS9100 implementation or certification. • Experienced across the full product lifecycle, from requirements and design through supplier manufacture, assembly, test, qualification, and production. • Deeply familiar with AS9100 and practical aerospace or defence quality expectations, including configuration control, traceability, nonconformance, CAPA, FAI, supplier quality, and audit readiness. • Comfortable operating across design quality, supplier quality, and manufacturing quality rather than being confined to one narrow area. • Proven at handling serious quality escapes, leading containment and root-cause analysis, and driving corrective actions to permanent closure. • Credible with senior engineers, programme leaders, manufacturing teams, suppliers, customers, and auditors. • Able to distinguish between controls that protect product integrity and process that exists only because it has always existed. • Strong at building simple, usable systems that teams follow under pressure. • Experienced qualifying and managing suppliers producing flight-critical, safety-critical, or tightly controlled hardware. • Comfortable making hard calls when schedule pressure conflicts with evidence, traceability, or product conformity. • Hands-on by default. You are prepared to be on the shop floor, in design reviews, at supplier sites, and inside investigations when the programme needs it. • Calm, decisive, and commercially aware, with the judgement to keep hardware moving without normalising risk. • Experience with AQAP, MoD quality requirements, composite manufacturing, special processes, or missile systems is highly valuable but not essential. • Experience working with hazardous materials, explosives, energetic materials, or other major-hazard environments would be an advantage, but is not essential. • Motivated by building a quality function from zero where the standard directly determines whether hardware is accepted, tested, and flown. • ## Security and eligibility requirement • Due to the nature of the work with the UK MoD, applicants must be a British Citizen, or a dual national holding British citizenship, and eligible for UK Security Clearance and, where required, Developed Vetting.
Responsibilities
• Build and lead Hypersonica’s UK quality function across design, supply chain, manufacturing, assembly, test, and production. • Design and implement a lean, scalable Quality Management System from zero, aligned to AS9100 and relevant defence quality requirements. • Own the pathway to AS9100 certification, including gap assessment, process architecture, documentation, internal audits, management reviews, corrective actions, and certification readiness. • Define the minimum credible quality controls required for prototype, development, qualification, and production hardware, increasing rigour as the programme matures. • Embed quality into engineering and operations from the outset, ensuring requirements, design decisions, change control, verification evidence, and build records remain clear and traceable. • Own nonconformance, MRB, concessions, deviations, CAPA, and root-cause processes, ensuring issues are contained quickly and permanently resolved. • Build the supplier quality operating model, including supplier selection, qualification, quality agreements, audits, first article inspection, incoming inspection, performance management, and corrective action. • Establish product and process quality controls across manufacturing and assembly, including inspection plans, critical characteristics, special processes, calibration, measurement systems, and configuration traceability. • Define and lead quality readiness gates across design reviews, production readiness reviews, first article inspection, test readiness, and flight readiness. • Act as the senior quality authority during high-consequence decisions, balancing programme speed with evidence, traceability, and product integrity. • Build audit-ready systems by default, ensuring evidence exists because it supports delivery rather than because someone may ask for it later. • Lead engagement with customers, certification bodies, auditors, suppliers, and defence stakeholders on quality matters. • Create concise quality metrics that leadership actually uses, including NCR cycle time, escape rate, supplier quality, first-pass yield, audit findings, CAPA closure, and recurring defect trends. • Build and lead the future UK quality team, defining the required capabilities across design quality, supplier quality, manufacturing quality, and quality systems. • Establish a culture where quality is owned by everyone and the quality function enables engineering rather than policing it.
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