Quality & Compliance Manager (Toys)

John Adams Leisure Ltd. is seeking a meticulous and experienced Quality and Compliance Manager to ensure our products meet the highest standards of safety, quality, and compliance across UK/EU regulations.

You’ll work closely with our R&D team, suppliers, and international offices to manage product safety assessments, technical documentation, and ethical standards. Ideal candidates will have a background in retail or supply chain compliance—preferably within the toy industry—and a strong grasp of toy safety regulations, REACH, and packaging waste initiatives.

If you’re detail-oriented, proactive, and passionate about delivering safe, fun products for families, we’d love to hear from you!

The Company:

John Adams is one of the leading toys and games companies and considered a key player within their sector. Our mission is to develop innovative products that are high quality, fun and deliver a positive and wholesome experience for children and families.

The Role:

Reporting to Head of Product, we are looking for a highly diligent individual with excellent attention to detail. The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluating products to determine their safety, quality and compliance with UK/EU standards and regulations, in particular, UK/EU Toy Safety and REACH Regulations.

Occupying an important position the candidate will need to be highly conscientious and responsible, ensuring the company meets internal and external standards and compliance obligations.

To work well in this position, you will have proven experience from a similar role within a retail or supplier background, having worked, ideally, within the toy industry. With the ability to influence suppliers and manufacturers in areas of quality and compliance, you will bring a confident, forward thinking, and initiative-taking approach towards developing internal and supplier relationships.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with our R&D team and suppliers to ensure effective development of new and existing products.
• Support our Hong Kong office with development of new product and international customer requirements.
• Keep up to date with the latest industry innovations and developments, using your technical expertise in product compliance to provide expert consultation to the business.
• Set up and manage technical files for each product.
• Undertake product and chemical safety assessments to ensure compliance with global toy safety and other regulations where applicable.
• Liaise with suppliers and manufacturers to ensure they consistently adhere to relevant industry ethical and quality standards e.g. (ICTI, BSCI, SMETA and ISO9001).
• Evaluate products, packaging, and final production samples to ensure they meet quality, safety standards, and legal requirements prior to launch.
• Maintain technical and production sample libraries.
• Co-ordinate, review, and sign-off pre-shipment inspections.
• Engage with test laboratories from point of development through to final product testing stages.
• Monitor test reports for continued validity during the life of the product.
• Maintain a close relationship with the warehouse team to provide support and lead where quality issues may arise.
• Lead the reduction of plastic and packaging waste in all in-house development and distributed products.
• Monitor and measure the companies waste packaging data.
• Inform the NPD team and Hong Kong office of all global waste packaging initiatives and taxes.
• Maintain a quality management system that has the required level of flexibility to take account of the various business needs, whilst maintaining structure and disciplines to ensure compliance in respect of Quality, Product Safety, CSR, Environmental and Legal Obligations.
• Advise on legal product safety, instructions, and packaging recycling labelling.
• Manage the compliance budget ensuring efficient use covering testing, audits, and inspections.
• Create and manage the library of declarations of conformity required for distribution of products.
• Be familiar with product recall plans and ensure the companies plan meets current guidance.
• Work with customer services to support, review and advise on responses and lead product investigations for testing failures, product safety complaints and quality issues.
• Advise on UK/EU compliance for distributed items sourced from outside of the UK/EU.

Requirements:

• Degree or similar qualification/experience in product development.
• Demonstrates detailed knowledge of product safety & technical standards, in particular Toys and, ideally, in other highly regulated product categories e.g. Cosmetics, Food compliance.
• Ability to undertake chemical safety assessments using an established chemical database.
• A working knowledge of global plastic and packing waste taxes e.g. EPR, PPT.
• Proven experience in a similar retail or supplier role.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Excellent verbal and written communication.
• Data analysis and statistical aptitude.
• Highly conscientious and diligent.
• Able to demonstrate an in-depth working knowledge of QA & QC practices and methodology.
• Resilience in following through business-critical issues.
• Persuasive approach to problem solving at all levels.
• Good interpersonal skills with the ability to relate to a broad spectrum of individuals.
• Well organised with the ability to plan workload to achieve deadlines.