Plant Quality Manager

Proterra•Greer, SC

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Proterra offers a dynamic and supportive workplace where our employees can thrive personally and professionally. With cutting-edge facilities and groundbreaking projects, Proterra offers unique opportunities to grow, collaborate, and lead transformative change in the electrification of heavy-duty transportation and equipment. Our commitment to innovation extends beyond our battery solutions to our people, where we create an environment where everyone feels valued, supported, and empowered to drive change for the earth. Here at Proterra we strive to foster a culture of inclusivity, valuing diverse perspectives and encouraging bold ideas, allowing our employees to bring their full selves to work. Our employees benefit from competitive total rewards packages, and opportunities to develop professionally. Position Overview: The Plant Quality Manager is a critical operations leader responsible for owning plant quality end-to-end — strategy, execution, and results. This role leads all aspects of quality management within an EV battery manufacturing facility, ensuring products meet internal specifications, customer requirements, and applicable regulatory and safety standards. The Plant Quality Manager drives a culture of continuous improvement, builds and sustains high-performing quality teams, and serves as the key quality partner to production, engineering, supply chain, and customers. This is a highly visible, floor-present leadership role. Success requires the ability to operate simultaneously at a strategic level — designing and executing the plant quality strategy — and at a hands-on level, actively engaging on the production floor to identify defects, drive root cause resolution, and ensure corrective actions are implemented and sustained.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in engineering, Quality Management, Manufacturing, or a related technical field
5+ years of quality management experience in a manufacturing environment, with at least 2 years in a leadership role
Demonstrated experience with QRQC, 8D, 5-Why, Pareto analysis, and structured root cause methodologies
Proven ability to define, track, and act on quality KPIs including FPY, scrap, and defect rate metrics
Experience establishing standard work and accountability systems for quality teams
Strong working knowledge of incoming inspection, in-process quality control, and final inspection processes
Excellent communication skills — able to present data clearly to both floor-level teams and senior leadership
Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S.
There is no immigration sponsorship available for this role (ex: H1-B, OPT, CPT, TN or any other employment sponsorship).

Responsibilities

Own the plant quality strategy — including its design, execution effectiveness, and measurable outcomes
Define, communicate, and align the organization to quality standards at every level of the operation
Connect quality metrics directly to plant production goals and customer impact
Anticipate quality risks before they become customer issues; lead preventive quality, not just reactive fixes
Treat internal defects with the same urgency as if the customer had already received them
Review warranty data, customer complaints, and audit feedback regularly; drive systemic corrective action
Align supervisors and leads to the quality strategy — ensuring teams understand how their daily work impacts overall quality outcomes
Celebrate quality wins and reinforce expectations consistently across the organization
End-to-end ownership of incoming inspection including criteria definition in partnership with Engineering and Supply Chain
Incoming defect tracking by supplier to drive corrective actions and adjust inspection frequency
Escalation expectations when incoming defects threaten production or customer commitments
Establish, own, and continuously improve the plant QRQC process as a foundational function to protect production
Review and document all issues raised by the line or identified by Quality Technicians every shift
Identify duplicate issues, repeat failures, safety-critical items, and training-related defects
Issue quality alerts with urgency — operators must receive timely, clear feedback to prevent recurrence
Ensure neighbor checks are in place and designed to prevent known failure modes
Actively participate in morning stand-ups to review issues with operators and cross-functional teams
Ensure QRQC findings drive root cause analysis and effective corrective actions — not just containment
Escalate immediately when resources or cross-functional support are needed to drive resolution
Define and own plant quality KPIs including First Pass Yield (FPY), scrap rate, and QRQC audit findings
Capture quality metrics in real time; structure data to enable trend analysis, Pareto review, root cause identification, and corrective action tracking
Review performance daily and weekly; adjust actions proactively based on data trends
Personally sponsor and lead major corrective actions; ensure 8D and 5-Why analyses are thorough — not surface level
Verify effectiveness checks are completed and improvements are sustained over time
Standardize proven improvements across all lines to prevent recurrence
Drive incoming inspection processes with urgency; establish clear workload prioritization by risk and priority
Lead continuous improvement initiatives that simplify processes and reduce burden on the quality team
Break larger improvement initiatives into achievable milestones; drive forward quickly without waiting for a perfect solution
Establish and enforce standard work for all quality team functions — including expected task durations, shift responsibilities, and daily targets
Ensure team members have clear visibility to the production schedule and understand daily and weekly targets
Ensure standard work is executed at 100%; track and report team performance against standard
Define escalation paths for when standard work cannot be completed due to resource, material, or process constraints
Lead, develop, and hold accountable a team of Quality Technicians, Quality Tech Supervisors, and quality support staff
Establish clear daily, weekly, and monthly goals for each team member aligned to production targets and quality strategy
Understand team capacity and workload; flex resources dynamically to meet daily business needs and priorities
Develop and maintain a team training plan — identifying internal skill gaps and external training requirements
Ensure team members attend morning stand-ups with awareness of production goals
Recognize and celebrate milestones; build a team culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement
Model belief, focus, and commitment to results — lead with facts, clarity, and solutions
Manage personal and team communications with professionalism; maintain solution-oriented dialogue in all settings
Come to all meetings — morning stand-ups, end-of-day calls, and leadership reviews — prepared with concise, data-driven updates focused on next steps and disposition
Proactively push quality data to the organization without being prompted, including: Repeat QRQC findings, Quality alerts and containment status, Environmental monitoring data (e.g., humidity) with documented findings and escalation paths, Floor testing data trends and recommendations
Lead discussions that are action-oriented, forward-looking, and centered on ownership and measurable results
Escalate effectively when cross-functional support — from Engineering, Supply Chain, or Operations — is needed and is not forthcoming
Partner with Engineering on quality-by-design and supplier quality development
Serve as the primary quality interface for customer audits, customer complaints, and external quality reviews