Quality Assurance Manager

Head of Quality (Concrete) Up to £85,000 + company car + benefits North East England

Most quality leads in this industry spend their careers holding the line — defending a specification against the pressure to thin it out, carrying the audit trail for decisions made above their heads, watching their best ideas sit in a drawer because the structure above them never made room to act on them. This role is the opposite of that. It's a privately-owned construction materials business, financially strong, with a board that's genuinely hands-on — in the building, in the conversations, and making the decisions. You report directly into that board. No regional layer, no committee to convince, no business case to write before you're allowed to think about something.

When you have a view on a product, a standard, a process or an investment, it goes straight to the people who can act on it. That structure is rare in this industry, and it's the reason the role exists in the form it does. Where quality is the strategy, not the constraint.

In most large groups, the daily pressure on a quality professional is to let specifications drift to the edge of compliance and eke the last bit of margin out of every cubic metre. Quality ends up holding the line on standards while everyone else pushes against it. This business works the other way. It deliberately over-engineers its products — a conscious decision, driven by the conviction that long-term reputation is built on what leaves the plant, not on shaving margin out of a specification. Being privately owned and free of shareholder pressure is what makes that sustainable. For you, it changes the nature of the job: your instincts on standards aren't in tension with the commercial direction, they're aligned with it. You're not the brake on margin. You're the reason customers come back.

The influence the seat carries: You'll be the quality and technical authority for concrete and related products — Factory Production Control, certificates of design and compliance, technical support to the commercial team, customer-facing problem solving, laboratory oversight, competence auditing, and engagement with external certification bodies. That's the spec. What it doesn't tell you is what's genuinely on offer: the scope to set technical direction without going through three layers to do it, the room to develop and trial new products on a timescale that reflects the opportunity rather than the process, the authority to make calls on customer technical issues in real time, the latitude to build the team's capability the way you think it should be built, and board-level visibility for the work you do — with the credit that goes with it.

It's a seat that will land with the experienced quality lead in a major group who's tired of operating inside a matrix and wants to be the person whose name is on the work; with the senior professional who has the gravitas for a role like this but has never been given the room by their current employer; and with the strong incumbent at a competitor who's paid well, doing well, but has quietly stopped being challenged.

What this role demands: This is a technical-authority seat, and the essentials are non-negotiable:

• A concrete production background — you've operated inside concrete manufacturing
• A recognised concrete technical qualification — ICT Diploma in Concrete Technology, a relevant industry degree, or equivalent
• Deep, demonstrable credibility in concrete quality and production, with the career to back it up
• The range to operate from plant floor to boardroom without changing register

The package: Up to £85,000 base, negotiable for the right person, plus company car and benefits. The business invests in strong base salaries rather than variable, bonus-led packages — a deliberate choice that reflects how it runs: long-term, stable, focused on keeping the right people rather than churning them.