Sr Manager, Quality & Reliability Engineering

nVent•Anoka, MN

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Sr Manager, Design Quality, Reliability & Development Assurance will lead and partner with engineering teams to establish scalable, practical approaches for design quality, verification and validation, reliability engineering, technical reviews, and product development rigor. The role drives consistency in how products are developed, tested, and assessed for readiness while maintaining the speed and agility needed in a fast-growing New Product Introduction (NPI) environment. The successful candidate combines engineering credibility with influence and change-leadership skills, builds common practices, coaches engineering teams, establishes engineering standards, and develops a team that enables predictable product development outcomes across multiple business units. This role is a key member of the Engineering Excellence organization. The role establishes design-quality practices, design review methodologies, engineering-readiness expectations, and technical maturity criteria throughout the product development lifecycle. It defines expectations for system architecture, multifunctional design reviews, design maturity, issue closure, and technical evidence, and ensures that customer and product requirements, critical-to-quality characteristics, and initial risks become clear engineering inputs early in development. The position establishes common verification and validation methodologies, including expectations for verification strategies, test planning, evidence, and requirements-to-test traceability. It supports milestone readiness assessments and ensures validation results are appropriately documented. The role owns the technical assurance framework and evidence expectations for NPI tollgates and verification checkpoints, defines risk- and complexity-based entry and exit criteria for EV, DV, PV, and launch readiness, and integrates quality, reliability, and technical-readiness inputs into stage-gate decisions. The role develops reliability engineering methodologies and frameworks for DFMEA, risk assessment, reliability planning, and reliability growth; helps identify and mitigate technical risk; and connects reliability targets and development evidence to post-launch field performance. It also creates engineering standard work, templates, tools, guidance, metrics, and dashboards; institutionalizes lessons learned; drives systemic improvements; and partners across Engineering, PMO, Quality, Manufacturing, ISC, Product Management, Commercial, Sustaining Engineering, and Service. The Sr Manager influences engineering practices across multiple business units, coaches and develops engineering excellence and reliability talent, leads cross-functional initiatives, and builds and scales the Quality, Reliability and Development Assurance organization as the capability matures.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or another technical field.
At least 8 years of engineering experience supporting NPI or product development environments.
At least 3 years leading engineering teams, technical programs, or engineering process improvement initiatives.
Demonstrated experience influencing engineering organizations and driving adoption of new practices.
Experience leading or participating in design reviews, technical reviews, and product development governance.
Strong understanding of product development lifecycles and engineering standards.
Ability to balance technical rigor with business speed and practicality.

Nice To Haves

Experience in reliability engineering, systems engineering, verification and validation, or design quality disciplines.
Experience implementing engineering processes or development frameworks across multiple teams or business units.
Knowledge of DFMEA, risk management, systems engineering, APQP, Design for Six Sigma, or related methodologies.
Experience developing engineering standards, design review frameworks, or product development operating models.
Experience building new capabilities or functions within a growing organization.

Responsibilities

Develop and implement standard engineering practices that improve design quality and development consistency.
Establish scalable design review methodologies and standard processes.
Define engineering readiness and technical maturity expectations throughout the product development lifecycle.
Partner with engineering leaders to improve technical rigor while maintaining development speed.
Provide independent technical challenge and feedback during development reviews.
Define expectations for system architecture, multifunctional design reviews, design maturity, issue closure, and required technical evidence.
Ensure customer requirements, product requirements, critical-to-quality characteristics, and initial risks are translated into clear engineering inputs early in development.
Establish common verification and validation methodologies across the organization.
Define expectations for verification strategies, test planning, test evidence, and requirements-to-test traceability; develop scalable traceability approaches.
Partner with engineering teams to improve verification planning early in development and support readiness assessments for major product development milestones.
Ensure validation confirms requirements and critical-to-quality characteristics have been met and that results are appropriately documented.
Establish measures to evaluate verification and validation effectiveness, including coverage, issue discovery, closure, and retest.
Own the technical assurance framework and evidence expectations for key NPI tollgates and verification checkpoints.
Define scalable, risk- and complexity-based entry and exit criteria for EV, DV, PV, and launch readiness.
Assess technical maturity, quality and reliability risk, and completeness of required engineering evidence.
Ensure unresolved technical risks, exceptions, and deviations are documented, assigned, time-bound, and visible to decision-makers.
Partner with Engineering leaders and PMO to integrate quality, reliability, and technical-readiness inputs into NPI stage-gate decisions.
Support risk-based application of the assurance process to maintain rigor without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Develop and deploy reliability engineering methodologies appropriate to product risk and complexity.
Establish frameworks for DFMEA, risk assessment, reliability planning, and reliability growth.
Drive proactive identification and mitigation of technical risk and integrate reliability considerations earlier in design.
Build and lead reliability engineering capabilities over time.
Establish reliability targets and measures connecting development evidence to post-launch field performance.
Create practical engineering standard work, templates, tools, and guidance materials.
Identify gaps in current development practices and drive systemic improvements; capture and institutionalize engineering lessons learned across business units.
Establish metrics and dashboards measuring engineering effectiveness, product readiness, open technical risk, validation effectiveness, field performance, and corrective-action effectiveness.
Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
Partner with Sustaining Engineering, Quality, Service, and business engineering teams to identify systemic trends and prioritize corrective actions.
Build strong partnerships with Engineering, PMO, Quality, Manufacturing, ISC, Product Management, and Commercial teams.
Influence engineering practices across multiple business units without direct authority.
Coach, mentor, and develop future engineering excellence and reliability talent.
Lead cross-functional initiatives that improve product development effectiveness.
Build and scale the Quality, Reliability and Development Assurance organization as the capability matures.