Global Quality Manager in Carlisle

James Walker is part of the James Walker Group of Companies, who are a successful global Industrial organisation supplying high performance sealing products and solutions.

With state-of-the-art material technology skills, the James Walker Strategic Business Unit (SBU) of the James Walker Group specialises in the provision of sealing solutions (elastomers, polymers, composites, engineering plastics, high nickel alloys).

Our worldwide group of companies has operations, sales and service entities across Europe, Middle East, India, Australia, New Zealand, SE Asia, South Africa and North and South America

The Position

James Walker SPS are looking to recruit a Global Quality Manager to oversee the development and delivery of a consistent global quality strategy across the manufacturing business, ensuring product conformity, customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, and continuous improvement.

This role acts as a strategic business partner to operations, sales, technical, and senior leadership teams, strengthening quality capability, reducing risk, improving right‑first‑time performance, and supporting sustainable operational profitability across all sites and regions.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and implement a Global Quality Strategy across all main manufacturing locations and sales regions as supported by Group Board.
• Development of quality personnel; transitioning our approach from an almost exclusive focus on the Operational Support, Control and Management of quality systems to working as a business partner to drive Assurance through continuous improvement.

Develop local Quality leadership in each operating company.

• Establish quality performance indicators to feed into monthly review by the divisional Board e. g scrap cost, audit adherence, customer satisfaction score.

Develop a Quality dashboard for Quality leadership to drive improvement.

• Unify the quality function with common goals, development and ways of working. Share and promote best practice activity and better ways of working.
• Prioritised focus on Quality at Board level with enhanced understanding of the value that a quality function can deliver.

Align quality objectives across Sales and MBU personnel to improve customer loyalty, product conformity and operational performance.

• Maintenance of global compliance across James Walker; including QMS certifications, internal audit and where applicable customer required test schedules.
• Monitor quality activities to ensure company’s products comply to set quality standards.

The successful candidate must have

• Proven ability to lead and influence quality improvement across multiple sites, functions, and regions.
• Strong strategic thinking, with the ability to translate business objectives into a clear global quality strategy.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, including the confidence to engage and challenge senior leaders, operational teams, technical colleagues, and customer‑facing teams.
• A proactive continuous improvement mindset, with experience driving right‑first‑time performance, waste reduction, root cause elimination, and sustainable quality improvements.
• Strong analytical and data‑led decision‑making skills, including the ability to use quality KPIs, audit findings, customer feedback, and performance trends to prioritise action.
• A collaborative leadership style, with the ability to unify quality teams, share best practice, and develop consistent ways of working across the business.
• Strong technical credibility in quality management systems, compliance, audit, risk management, corrective action, and product conformity.
• Commercial awareness, with an understanding of how quality performance impacts customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, profitability, and business reputation.
• Resilience, accountability, and the confidence to make decisions, maintain standards, and constructively challenge poor practice.
• A people‑development mindset, with experience coaching, mentoring, and developing quality professionals and local quality leaders.

Experience/Qualifications

• Degree‑qualified in an Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Science or Technical discipline — ideally BSc/BEng or MSc/MEng level.
• Certified Lead Auditor for ISO 9001, AS9100, or another relevant quality management standard.
• Recognised quality management qualification or professional membership, such as CQI/IRCA, ASQ, Chartered Quality Professional, or equivalent.
• Lean / Continuous Improvement certification, such as Lean Practitioner, Lean Leader or equivalent.
• Six Sigma certification, preferably Green Belt as a minimum.
• Formal root cause and corrective action training, such as 8D, 5 Why, Fishbone, DMAIC or CAPA.
• Risk management training or certification, covering tools such as FMEA, control plans, process risk assessment or enterprise risk management.
• #J-18808-Ljbffr