Quality Manager

Ensign-Bickford Industries • Simsbury, CT

23d • Onsite

About The Position

Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company is seeking a Quality Manager for its Simsbury, Connecticut site. The role provides unified leadership for the Energetics and Electronics Quality Engineering teams and site-level responsibility for quality performance, manufacturing quality, customer compliance, corrective action, team development, and the site quality management system. The manager will establish shared priorities, performance measures, and accountability across the teams while ensuring quality practices address their distinct technical requirements and manufacturing risks.

Working closely with Operations and other cross-functional partners, the Quality Manager will connect site strategy with shop-floor execution and embed quality in production readiness, daily work, customer commitments, and long-term site planning. This hands-on leadership role calls for strong knowledge of AS9100, customer requirements, manufacturing quality, and structured problem solving, along with the ability to strengthen quality culture and develop teams as the business scales.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; Engineering, Quality, Operations, or a related technical field preferred.
• Significant quality leadership experience in a complex manufacturing environment.
• Strong working knowledge of AS9100 and customer quality requirements.
• Demonstrated experience with manufacturing quality, containment, root cause analysis, corrective action, and quality system improvement.
• Experience leading, coaching, and developing Quality Engineering professionals across multiple teams, product lines, or manufacturing processes.
• Ability to establish consistent quality practices while addressing specialized technical and customer requirements.
• Ability to operate effectively at both the strategic and hands-on execution level.
• Strong customer-facing communication skills and credibility.
• Proven ability to influence across Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Production, and Program Management.

Nice To Haves

• Aerospace, defense, or other highly regulated manufacturing experience.
• Experience supporting Energetics and/or Electronics manufacturing; experience spanning both is highly desirable.
• Experience in a growing or complex production environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead all Quality Engineering teams supporting Energetics and Electronics, owning site quality performance, compliance, and execution.
• Establish clear priorities, accountability, and a consistent operating rhythm across both groups.
• Align team capacity, technical capability, and resources with program needs, production demand, and quality risks.
• Balance hands-on issue resolution with site priorities and long-term quality system improvement.
• Partner with Operations leadership to advance Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost objectives.
• Maintain and strengthen the site quality management system in alignment with AS9100, customer requirements, and applicable aerospace and defense standards.
• Ensure quality processes address the distinct requirements of Energetics and Electronics products and manufacturing operations.
• Standardize practices where appropriate and share lessons learned across teams to prevent recurring issues.
• Ensure adherence to internal procedures, regulatory requirements, and customer expectations; lead audit readiness, support customer and external reviews, and ensure timely closure of findings.
• Identify systemic risks and drive improvements in process control, discipline, and predictability.
• Build and sustain a high-performing team through hiring, development, performance management, and employee engagement.
• Develop specialized expertise, technical capability, succession depth, and employee engagement across the site quality organization.
• Encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, consistent problem-solving, ownership, urgency, transparency, and continuous learning.
• Lead containment, root cause analysis, corrective action, and prevention across Energetics and Electronics manufacturing.
• Ensure quality engineering support reflects product characteristics, process risks, and inspection and test requirements for each group.
• Use data, facts, and cross-functional engagement to drive structured problem solving.
• Partner with Production, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Program Management to resolve quality issues and verify corrective action effectiveness.
• Improve first-pass yield, reduce defects and escapes, strengthen production readiness, and apply lessons learned across product lines and teams.
• Represent site quality credibly to customers across Energetics and Electronics programs.
• Lead communication and resolution of customer concerns, nonconformances, corrective actions, and quality performance issues.
• Ensure customer quality requirements are understood and incorporated into planning and execution.
• Build cross-functional partnerships and drive shared ownership of quality as production demand and program complexity grow.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager