Head of Quality

Job Summary

Required Qualifications

• •Take ownership before they're asked
• •Operate with a high degree of judgment
• •Communicate directly — concise, clear, and candid, especially when stakes are high
• •Hold a high bar for themselves first, then for everyone around them
• •Are genuinely energized by hard problems in physical, real-world environments
• •Stay effective when things are ambiguous, changing, or under pressure
• •Own the quality system that earns Foundational the right to build — across every vertical we serve and every standard our customers run on
• •Stand up a single QMS that serves every vertical Foundational builds in — architected from day one to absorb the toughest standards (AS9100, ISO 13485, IATF 16949, ISO 9001)
• •Own the certification roadmap end-to-end — ISO 9001 as the baseline, then the vertical-specific standards our first programs require (AS9100, ISO 13485, IATF 16949, NADCAP, and others as the customer mix demands) — and pass each audit on the first attempt
• •Build supplier quality from zero — qualification, FAIs, PPAP where required, source inspection, and counterfeit-mitigation controls aligned to AS9100 / AS6171
• •Establish the operating cadence that keeps quality real on the floor — control plans, FAIs, in-process inspection, NCR/CAPA discipline, MRB, SPC, and the closed-loop feedback that drives yield and cost of poor quality down every quarter
• •Define the digital QMS — document control, training records, NCR/CAPA, audit, supplier quality — and partner with engineering so traceability and inspection data are software-native, not paper retrofitted into a database
• •Multi-standard QMS architecture — deep fluency in ISO 9001, AS9100, ISO 13485 / FDA QSR (21 CFR 820), and IATF 16949, and a working sense of where they converge, where they don't, and how additional customer- and vertical-specific standards layer on top
• •Audit leadership — registrar, customer, and regulatory; you've led companies through first-time certification and passed cleanly
• •Core quality engineering toolkit — APQP/PPAP, FMEA, control plans, MSA, SPC, 8D, root cause and CAPA discipline that actually closes loops
• •Electronics & precision-manufacturing quality — IPC-A-610 / J-STD-001, FAIs (AS9102), source inspection, dimensional metrology, and special-process accreditation (NADCAP)
• •Digital QMS & data fluency — comfortable defining the systems and data model (eQMS, traceability, inspection records) that the function runs on, not just operating off a shared drive
• •Accountability — You own outcomes. If something's off track, you say so and fix it
• •Bias for action — You ship. You iterate. You move toward the hard thing
• •Clarity of communication — Direct and concise, especially when it counts
• •Learning agility — You get up to speed fast in unfamiliar territory
• •Resilience — You stay sharp when things are hard, ambiguous, or moving fast
• •High standards — You raise the bar rather than match it — and hold yourself to it first
• •Building from zero — You can stand up a quality system from scratch — documents, processes, certifications, the team — and run it yourself until there's a team to hand it off to