Quality & Brand Excellence Manager - Textile

Our client, one of East Africa's leading vertically integrated textile and apparel manufacturers, is seeking to recruit a Quality and Brand Excellence Manager to lead quality standards, operational excellence, and continuous improvement initiatives across its manufacturing operations.

Level: Leadership Role

Role purpose

To build, uphold and protect the credibility of the Company's brands by ensuring the business consistently delivers the quality, reliability, and customer experience it promises to the market. The role exists to strengthen quality consciousness across the Company, eliminate recurring quality-facing losses, elevate execution standards, and embed a culture where excellence, consistency, and continuous improvement are non-negotiable. This role goes beyond traditional quality assurance. It serves as a strategic custodian of operational standards, product integrity, process discipline, and the customer experience reflected through the Company's brands.

Key Responsibilities

1. Drive end-to-end quality excellence across manufacturing and finishing Operations

• Build and sustain a culture where consistency, finishing finesse, operational discipline, and excellence are embedded into daily execution across the business.
• Define and maintain company quality standards and expectations.
• Establish and maintain process quality controls across manufacturing and finishing processes.
• Build a culture where excellence is expected rather than inspected.

2. Proactively prevent quality losses and improve operational reliability

• Establish and maintain a permanent resolution of recurring quality issues by strengthening process discipline, accountability, and root-cause problem solving.
• Identify and eliminate recurring quality failures.
• Lead root-cause analysis and permanent corrective actions.
• Strengthen process discipline and operational reliability.

3. Protect brand credibility through consistent customer experience

• Ensure every customer interaction with the Company's products reflects the standards, quality, reliability, and trust associated with the Company's brands.
• Build customer trust by ensuring products consistently meet their quality expectations.
• Translate customer feedback into operational improvements for lasting solutions.
• Identify and address risks that could erode customer trust or brand reputation.

4. Build quality leadership, capability and accountability

• Build a quality-conscious organization where standards ownership extends beyond the Quality Team and becomes embedded across business operations.
• Develop capability within the Quality Team.
• Establish ownership and accountability for quality at all process levels.
• Ensure quality risks are identified, escalated, and addressed promptly.
• Build and maintain strong operational partnerships between relevant teams while maintaining standards integrity.

5. Shape the future quality and brand excellence capability

• Continuously elevate standards, systems, and operational practices in anticipation of evolving customer and market expectations.
• Promote a culture of excellence and disciplined execution across the Company.
• Continuously develop the Quality Team for future readiness.
• Contribute to growth, expansion, and new business opportunities through data-driven quality decisions.

Key deliverables

• Consistent delivery of the quality, finesse, and customer experience standards associated with the Company's brands.
• Prevention of quality-related losses through improved operational reliability and permanent resolution of recurring issues.
• A strong quality culture characterized by clear accountability, disciplined execution, and continuous improvement.
• Future-ready quality systems, standards, and team capability that support business growth and evolving customer expectations.

KPIs / Success measures

1. Customer quality and experience performance.
   (Complaints, claims, customer feedback trends, customer satisfaction indicators.)
2. Quality-facing loss reduction.
   (Rework, rejection, waste, returns, cost of poor quality.)
3. Operational quality reliability.
   (Recurring issue reduction, process stability, adherence to critical standards.)
4. Quality capability and continuous improvement effectiveness.
   (Improvement implementation, capability development, sustainability of corrective actions.)

Key Accountabilities / Decision making

1. Defining and maintaining the quality standards required to protect customer trust and brand credibility.
2. Determining quality and customer experience risks that require escalation, intervention, or corrective action.
3. Approving significant quality improvement initiatives and corrective action plans.
4. Recommending operational, process, and system changes required to strengthen standards, consistency, and reliability.
5. Assessing quality readiness and standards implications relating to growth, expansion, new processes, and strategic initiatives.

Stakeholder interfaces

Internal
CEO
Head of Production
Heads of Function
Production Leadership
Technical Teams
Maintenance Teams
Supply Chain Teams
Commercial / Customer Teams

External
Customers
Statutory / Government Bodies
External Quality Partners and Auditors

Key skills & competencies

Strong attention to detail
Quality-first mindset
Continuous improvement mentality
Ability to build systems and controls
Appreciation for product finishing and finesse
Strong follow-through and discipline
Data-to-decision capability
Customer and market awareness
Strong professional courage and accountability
Team development

Qualifications & experience

Education

• Bachelor's degree in either of these fields:
• Textile Technology, Manufacturing, Quality Management, or a related discipline.

Hands-on experience

Must haves

• 6+ years' experience in a leadership role leading quality, operational excellence, manufacturing improvement, or related fields in a complex manufacturing environment.
• Proven track record of improving standards, significantly reducing quality losses, and strengthening operational performance.
• Experience leading cross-functional improvement and change initiatives.
• Experience building teams, capability, and sustainable systems.

Preferred

• Experience within vertically integrated textile manufacturing, apparel factories, or similar manufacturing environments where consistency, finishing, finesse, and customer experience are critical.
• Exposure to quality management systems and continuous improvement methodologies.
• Conversant with knitwear quality requirements.