Title: Supplier Quality Engineer
This is an almost fully remote role; on rare occasions the team will be expected to be onsite at the Darlington plant. DL1 4PW
This role may require travel to supplier sites within the UK or mainland Europe.
The initial end date is 31/12/2026, there is a possibility for extension.
Job Summary:
The Supplier Quality Engineer utilizes strong quality and technical skills to develop suppliers and products that can meet customer requirements; requires strong partnerships with the external supply base, with supply chain teams and with engineering to achieve results
Key Responsibilities:
• Build strong relationships with all critical partners to improve quality and business outcomes, including external suppliers, external customers, and internal customers and stakeholders, such as Purchasing, Manufacturing and Engineering.
• Support the cross-functional supplier selection process for any given component.
• Collaborates with external suppliers to validate that the manufacturing process is designed in a manner that enables conformance to the engineering print, engineering standards and customer specific requirements
• Apply industry common Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) processes, Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) tools, and company’s specialty tools to develop zero defect components within the external supply base.
• Embrace continuous improvement in the external supply base by contributing to product and process focused projects that utilize industry proven methodologies, such as lean and six-sigma.
• Conduct external supplier audits in support of supplier risk mitigation, supplier readiness, and supplier performance improvement.
• Support quality improvement plans within the external supply base in order to improve supplier performance
• Ensure resolution of external supplier related quality challenges, by leading root cause analysis, by supporting development of corrective actions and by verifying the effectiveness of corrective actions.
Specific Role Responsibilities:
• Mainly support Global 7 Activities in Europe Region
• Create and Monitor Source Releases
• Monitor report from CQMS and follow-up with SQE’s to review and approve SR
• Build issues – Onsite support for build quality issues
• Collaborate with DEP Quality and VPI SQ leader to resolve build issues
• Investigate the issue and lead the emerging quality process
• Provide immediate temporary fix for the issue through part sorting
• Work with suppliers and SQE to resolve the issue
• APQP/PPAP Support
• Work with VPI program leads to support APQP projects
• Manage APQP metrics and report monthly
• Update APQP tracker for monthly report outs
• Issue APQP’s to suppliers and conduct monthly formal reviews
• FIRG Support Lead quality FIRG’s from step 3-7
• Lead root cause analysis and closure in the RV&S system
• Manage and report medium-ZDM components with SQE’s
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