Validation Director

Faurecia • Auburn Hills, MI

11d

About The Position

The Validation Director leads FORVIA’s North America (NAO) validation organization and defines and executes its regional validation strategy. The role ensures products meet customer, regulatory, quality, and manufacturing requirements throughout the product lifecycle while managing validation risks and commitments and developing the people, processes, and capabilities needed to support business growth and performance.

The Director oversees validation strategy, operating models, standards, processes, tools, governance, planning, execution, sourcing, budgets, and performance measures. The role sets expectations for validation evidence and approvals, leads responses to test failures and product concerns, and ensures disciplined analysis and corrective-action verification. It also serves as the senior regional validation interface with customers and coordinates work across regional and global sites, laboratories, and external providers.

The position leads and develops a multi-site validation organization and partners with design and program teams to improve product robustness and validation efficiency. The successful candidate has substantial automotive industry experience, strong leadership and project management skills, familiarity with automotive testing and regulatory requirements, and a bachelor’s degree in technical engineering or a relevant field. A master’s degree is preferred.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Technical Engineering or a relevant field.
• Minimum 15 years of experience in the automotive industry.
• Strong leadership and project management skills.
• Familiarity with automotive test methods, standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Knowledge of design of seat components and mechanisms.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work as a team player.
• International mindset and minimum bilingual capability; English is required.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Technical Engineering or a relevant field preferred.
• Four to five years of experience in product testing and validation is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define and deploy the NAO validation strategy, operating model, footprint, standards, processes, tools, databases, competencies, and governance.
• Ensure validation plans translate customer, legal, regulatory, product, process, and internal requirements into methods, samples, acceptance criteria, timing, cost, and evidence.
• Approve validation approaches and evidence levels for RFQs, programs, design or process changes, deviations, and serial-life actions.
• Ensure required design validation, production validation, COP, reliability, performance, safety, comfort, NVH, durability, environmental, and other validation deliverables for NAO-led projects.
• Own regional validation commitments at acquisition and program gates, including plans, statements of work, technical assumptions, timing, resources, and testing or simulation cost estimates.
• Establish and govern validation execution processes, including DVP&R management, test readiness, requirement traceability, risk escalation, deviation management, evidence release, and production-part validation approval.
• Provide technical leadership for failed tests, red alerts, COP nonconformities, customer concerns, and launch or serial-life validation issues.
• Ensure disciplined failure analysis, root-cause identification, correlation of physical testing with simulation, corrective-action verification, and reuse of lessons learned.
• Challenge weak conclusions, incomplete evidence, and noncompliant test execution; require repeat testing or additional analysis when needed.
• Develop and manage validation sourcing strategies across internal laboratories, global validation centers, and external providers, ensuring capability, capacity, quality, compliance, and cost effectiveness.
• Create effective working routines across Auburn Hills, Puebla, and global sites, with clear ownership, priorities, handoffs, and escalation paths.
• Act as the senior regional validation interface with customers and represent the organization in technical reviews, program gates, escalations, audits, and recovery discussions.
• Partner with design and program teams early to influence product architecture, design robustness, testability, sample strategy, and validation sequencing.
• Communicate status, decisions, risks, recovery needs, and commitments through executive reporting and fact-based recommendations.
• Ensure validation teams are included early in program planning and regional validation spending and commitments are visible and controlled.
• Own departmental operating plans, budgets, capital planning, external testing spend, resource forecasts, workload allocation, and productivity improvement.
• Optimize internal versus external execution, sample reuse, test sequencing, subsystem approaches, simulation-to-test correlation, and automation to reduce lead time and validation cost without reducing technical rigor.
• Deploy KPIs for safety, quality, delivery, cost, capacity, report right-first-time, test success, issue closure, and customer satisfaction.
• Ensure compliance with company quality, environmental, safety, information-protection, ethics, and management systems.
• Lead, develop, and retain a high-performing multi-site validation organization through talent management, succession planning, hiring, training, and coaching.
• Approve regional validation strategies, DVP&R plans, test plans, statements of work, technical reports, and validation deliverables within delegated authority.
• Allocate and reprioritize validation workload across programs, sites, global resources, internal laboratories, and external suppliers.
• Escalate or stop validation activity when safety, compliance, sample integrity, test-method adherence, data quality, or technical evidence is inadequate.
• Recommend design changes, additional analysis, repeat testing, containment, deviation, or conditional release when validation evidence identifies risk.
• Approve departmental operating expenditures and recommend capital investments, organization changes, and staffing actions within company governance.

Benefits

• Learning and development resources, including FORVIA University training; employees average more than 22 hours of online and in-person training.
• Career development opportunities.
• Multicultural environment that values diversity and international collaboration.

What This Job Offers

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