Programme Quality Manager in Woking

Reporting to the ‘Technical Quality Director’, the ‘Programme Quality Manager’ engages at the very front end of the conceptual design process and plays an integral role within the vehicle projects to influence the overall styling, design, and manufacturing concepts, whilst also leading the programme for the vehicle quality until the handover to series is complete.

The core functions of the role are:

• Leading a team consisting of a Senior Quality Engineer and Faults Management Engineer, the ‘Programme Quality Manager’ is responsible for managing all programme quality activities across the respective vehicle projects.
• Leading the delivery of all internal customer quality KPI’s (MPA, CMM etc.)
• Responsible to lead the quality risk assessment against the programme supported by the ‘Are We Ready’ process.
• Must be able to work pragmatically in a team to find ways forward, while maintaining a clear focus on Quality.
• Continuous improvement of known quality issues through the new model process.

This is a challenging area of the business that operates at all levels of management from shop floor to executive director, across multiple projects at any given time and works cross functionally to resolve issues from concept through to launch. This role requires someone with a high level of interpersonal and communication skills that can persuade, guide and lead with assertion, while building important relationships at all levels both internally and externally across the business.

What You'll Do:

• Programme Quality Management
• Lead the delivery of all relevant McLaren Development Process (MDP) quality gateway deliverables in relation to the allocated programme (PT – SHC).
• Lead the governance of all quality control aspects, including the development of the project quality control plan and LQOS process.
• Lead the headcount planning process to ensure the respective ‘Quality’ departments are correctly resourced to support the released Business Plan.
• Responsible to ensure that all ‘Quality’ related costs are provisioned with a Value to Complete (VTC) budget line for each related item.
• Lead the Quality Concern Avoidance (QCA) activity to ensure robust prevention of repeat critical quality issues.
• Lead the prioritisation of issues to ensure the business can make informed decisions when launching vehicle programmes.
• Responsible for ensuring that all quality targets are defined in accordance with McLaren Product Audit (MPA) and Fault Per Vehicle (FPV).
• Responsible to support design and styling meetings, to ensure direction set is Designed for Quality (DFQ).
• Responsible to support gap & flush and dimensional variation analysis reviews to ensure built in, achievable Quality.
• Responsible to manage the vehicle quality attribute review together with PQ and Engineering teams.
• Responsible for driving improvements in quality culture across the programme team.
• Create, issue, and track all programme quality reporting against MDP deliverables.
• Audit Quality impacting programme deliverables, at each gateway, to create and present the Quality risk assessment.
• Leading a team of Quality Engineers, the ‘Programme Quality Manager’ is responsible for managing all quality Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and subsequent reporting.
• Responsible to manage and lead all technical problem allocations and steering via the Q-Day, supported by the ‘Senior Quality Engineer’ and ‘Fault Management Engineer’ to ensure prioritisation of all issues and risk filters are applied correctly.
• Support the problem-solving process.
• Responsible steering programme faults.
• Responsible to lead and manage the correct governance of all ‘Quality’ concerns regarding status ‘interlocks’ to ensure transparent reporting, providing a confidence level to the Head of Programme Quality and the Executive team when making launch related decisions.

What You'll Bring:

• Experience of low volume, high value automotive products.
• A degree in mechanical / automotive engineering or similar (2:1 or above) or equivalent experience in a similar role.
• An understanding/appreciation of customer quality expectations.
• Experience of low volume launch activities.
• Experience/knowledge of high-performance vehicle dynamics, or an interest to learn.
• Engineering design reviews.
• Manufacturing process reviews.
• Faults management control and KPI delivery.
• Styling design reviews.
• Budget planning and review meetings.
• Exec director meetings.
• Launch Readiness reviews.
• Experience of business and process audits.
• An understanding of new product release and change management process.

Essential Functional / Technical Skills:

• Quality target setting experience.
• 8D or Practical Problem Solving (PPS).
• Methodical approach to work with strong analytical skills.
• Good problem-solving ability.
• Basic understanding of SPC, statistics and process capabilities.
• Basic understanding of geometrical dimensioning and tolerancing.

Personal Attributes / Competencies:

• Strong collaboration and teamwork skills.
• Ability to pioneer for progress.
• Work with ambition and persistence.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Unquestionable personal and professional integrity.
• Methodical approach to work with strong analytical skills.
• Enthusiastic, driven, and positive.
• Quality focused - with demonstrated experience of automotive new model development.
• Driven by accuracy with high attention to detail.
• Ability to manage, prioritise tasks efficiently.
• Excellent organisational skills.
• Able to build good relationships at all levels, internally and externally.
• Resilient; able to work under pressure, and to tight deadlines.
• Ambitious, self-reliant and intrinsically self-motivated.
• Take ownership of the solutions and champion the change until implementation and full adoption.
• Able to work with and influence employees at all levels.
• Gains the respect of colleagues and is a team player who is more interested in results than personal preferences.

What We'll Do for You:

• We offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:
• Structured career development framework
• 25 days’ holiday, plus bank holiday. Annual buy & sell up to five days
• Enhanced company pension scheme
• Discretionary annual bonus award
• Private medical insurance and health cash plan
• Life assurance benefit
• Ability to apply for a sabbatical of up to one year after only two years’ service
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• Generous parental leave policies
• A range of wellbeing initiatives, such as employee assistance programme and free financial & mortgage advice

Who Are We?

No restraints. No limitations. We don’t simply push boundaries. We completely rethink them. McLaren Automotive exists to create breath-taking performance road cars. It takes a community to do what we do. A diverse group of people with many areas of expertise, united by their passion to deliver visionary products and set new benchmarks. McLaren Automotive commits to equal opportunity for all. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion is at the heart of our impact, it drives our innovation and enables us to truly create something special. Join us on our journey.