Learning and Quality Lead

Slate Auto • Louisville, KY

1d • Onsite

About The Position

At Slate, we are building safe, reliable vehicles that people can afford, personalize, and love, manufactured in the USA as part of our commitment to reindustrialization. The spirit of DIY and customization is central to every Slate vehicle, empowering owners to control how their trucks look, feel, and represent them. Our vehicles are designed to be wrapped, allowing for a unique level of expression and personalization. The Louisville production facility is where this vision is realized, producing both standard and custom wrap kits. This facility is under development, and the initial hires will play a crucial role in shaping its future. The Learning & Quality Lead will establish the operational foundation for the Louisville wrap production facility. This role encompasses two key areas: developing the training infrastructure to ensure operators meet the highest standards, and defining and enforcing quality standards to protect the Slate customer experience. The ideal candidate is comfortable both on the production floor observing processes and at a desk developing curriculum. This position reports to the Head of Wrap Operations and is expected to evolve into a team lead role as the facility expands.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in a training, learning & development, or operational excellence role within a fulfillment, distribution, warehouse, or manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience building training programs, SOPs, and work instructions from scratch.
• Hands-on quality experience: you have personally conducted audits, tracked defect metrics, identified root causes, and driven corrective action on a production floor.
• Experience owning quality KPIs — building the scorecards, running the stand-ups, and driving the corrective actions when targets are missed.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to translate complex processes into content that frontline operators can use.
• Data-literate: comfortable defining KPIs, building dashboards or tracking tools, and translating floor-level metrics into clear narratives for leadership.
• Proven ability to operate in a high-ambiguity, build-from-scratch environment with minimal structure and maximum ownership.
• Collaborative working style with the credibility to influence operators, peers, and senior leaders alike.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in custom graphics, large-format print, on-demand manufacturing, or a production environment with high SKU complexity or variability.
• Familiarity with vinyl wrap, vehicle personalization, or automotive aftermarket operations.
• Experience building automated reporting in Power BI or a comparable BI tool.
• Familiarity with quality management systems (QMS) and quality software platforms.
• Experience developing digital or multimedia training content (video SOPs, LMS platforms, e-learning modules).
• Background standing up quality or training programs for a new facility launch or significant operational expansion.
• Experience applying Lean, Six Sigma, or other continuous improvement methodologies in a production context.

Responsibilities

• Design and build all training materials for the facility from scratch, including standard operating procedures, work instructions, job aids, and onboarding programs for both kit production and custom wrap production workflows.
• Develop structured training plans for new hires and for cross-training existing operators, ensuring every team member can perform to standard before working independently.
• Build and maintain a training library that is organized, version-controlled, and easy to update as processes evolve.
• Partner with operations leadership and equipment vendors to translate technical processes into clear, executable training content.
• Track training completion and competency across the floor; identify gaps and close them proactively.
• Establish and lead a train-the-trainer model over time, building internal capability so the team can onboard at pace with facility growth.
• Develop the quality standards for both kit production and custom wrap production, defining what 'good' looks like at every stage of the process.
• Build and implement quality inspection protocols, audit cadences, and checkpoint criteria that can be applied consistently across shifts and operators.
• Conduct hands-on quality audits and floor inspections; identify defects, trace root causes, and drive corrective action with rigor and speed.
• Partner with the Partner Operations team to align internal production quality standards with downstream installation and customer experience expectations.
• Own and maintain daily Quality KPI Board accuracy, including defect rate, rework rate, first-pass yield, and throughput, ensuring data is current, visible, and actionable across the floor.
• Lead daily quality stand-ups, communicating performance trends, surfacing emerging issues, and triggering corrective actions before they compound.
• Develop a Quality KPI Automation Roadmap; build and deploy dashboards (Power BI or equivalent) that eliminate manual reporting and give leadership real-time visibility into production quality.
• Document data governance standards, refresh schedules, and reporting definitions so that quality data remains consistent and trustworthy as the team scales.
• Report quality performance to the Site Manager on a regular cadence, translating floor-level data into clear narratives and actionable recommendations.
• Drive the feedback loop between quality findings and training content; recurring defects should trigger immediate curriculum updates, not just corrective action tickets.
• Lead and support CI initiatives across the facility, partnering cross-functionally with operations and the Partner Operations team to align quality improvements with downstream installation and customer experience outcomes.
• Build sustainable quality workflows and behaviors that the team owns, not just processes that require constant oversight to maintain.
• Champion a culture of quality from day one, where every operator understands the standard, knows why it matters, and has the tools to meet it.

Benefits

• This is a rare opportunity to define what quality and operational excellence mean at a facility that doesn't fully exist yet and to see your work reflected in every wrap that ships to a Slate customer.
• You won't be handed a program to maintain. You'll build the program that everyone else will eventually run.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed