Senior Manager, Quality Engineering & Operational Performance

PVLabs
Burlington, Ontario

For PVLabs, quality is not a back-office function.

It sits at the center of everything we do: engineering decisions, supplier relationships, manufacturing readiness, customer confidence, and ultimately mission success.

This role gives you the opportunity to help shape how a growing aerospace and defense company operates. You will not inherit a mature system that only needs maintenance. You will have the opportunity to design it, improve it, simplify it, strengthen it, and make it more useful for the people relying on it every day.

You will work closely with leaders across Engineering, Operations, HR, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Program Management. You will have visibility into how the entire organization functions and the ability to make a direct impact on quality, delivery performance, and organizational effectiveness.

About the Role

This hands-on senior quality and operations role exists to bring structure, discipline, and continuous improvement to how PVLabs builds, delivers, and supports its systems.

You will own the health of our Quality Management System, drive day-to-day quality performance, and help improve how work flows across engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, and operations. This is not a large-team leadership role to start. It is a hands-on individual contributor position for someone who is equally comfortable inside a procedure, on a production floor, in an audit room, or working directly with engineers to solve a recurring problem.

You will help ensure that our quality processes are practical, scalable, and aligned with the realities of a growing aerospace and defense company operating under customer pressure, supplier delays, production variability, and strict compliance requirements.

This role is about making the business more predictable. You will help reduce rework, improve traceability, tighten supplier quality, strengthen audit readiness, improve documentation discipline, and create better visibility into where problems are occurring and why.

What You Will Own

1. Quality Management System (QMS)

• Own the day-to-day administration, maintenance, and improvement of the PVLabs Quality Management System.
• Lead updates to procedures, work instructions, forms, templates, process maps, and quality records.
• Ensure the QMS remains aligned with ISO 9001, AS9100 readiness requirements, Controlled Goods requirements, and customer-specific expectations.
• Act as the internal owner for ISO audit readiness across the company.
• Coordinate and manage internal and external audits, including registrar audits, customer audits, supplier audits, and surveillance audits.
• Serve as the primary liaison between PVLabs and external auditors, registrars, and customer quality representatives.
• Ensure Engineering, HR, Finance, Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Production teams remain audit-ready and compliant with documented procedures.
• Maintain audit schedules, audit evidence, corrective action logs, management review records, training records, calibration records, and quality metrics required for certification maintenance.
• Ensure risk registers, opportunities registers, corrective actions, preventive actions, and management review actions are actively maintained, updated, and closed.
• Lead internal audit planning and coordinate cross-functional participation in audit preparation and follow-up activities.
• Monitor overdue corrective actions, audit findings, non-conformances, and process gaps to ensure issues do not remain open without ownership.
• Support Management Review activities by preparing KPI summaries, audit results, non-conformance trends, supplier quality trends, customer complaints, and business process risks.
• Improve document control, revision control, training records, and process compliance across departments.
• Work closely with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Operations to ensure procedures reflect how work is actually performed.
• Support PVLabs' longer-term transition from ISO 9001 to AS9100 by helping identify gaps, building required processes, and improving organizational readiness over time.

2. Operational/Organizational Performance

• Establish an operational culture that values quality assurance as a performance tool, and continuous improvement as the language of quality and performance.
• Define and implement an Operational Excellence system, promoting best practices throughout the organization.
• Drive change by leading LEAN/CI projects in collaboration with leadership, customers, and employees - focusing on improving business results while preserving our unique culture.
• Collaborate with HR and management for performance conversations, emphasizing monthly one-on-ones and reinforcing performance expectations.
• Build trust-based relationships through open communication with employees, business partners, and leaders, while actively seeking feedback and personal development.
• Coach and champion operational excellence transformation through continuous improvement events and relevant training workshops.
• Design and implement learning programs for the production team, addressing skill gaps and fostering continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with HR to create and deliver relevant learning and development programs, fostering career development paths.
• Contribute to the development of an Operational Excellence library for consistent deployment of training materials and problem-solving tools.
• Implement meaningful KPIs and OKRs to measure operational performance, emphasizing adherence to ISO quality standards. Analyze data for improvement opportunities and implement corrective actions.

3. Product Quality & Manufacturing Support

• Support incoming inspection, in-process inspection, final inspection, and non-conformance management activities.
• Drive root cause investigations, corrective actions, preventive actions, supplier corrective actions, and containment plans.
• Help establish practical inspection plans, validation requirements, and acceptance criteria for new products and processes.
• Support First Article Inspection (FAI), supplier qualification, supplier audits, and production readiness activities.
• Work with Manufacturing Engineering and Production to improve repeatability, reduce rework, and improve yield.
• Help ensure traceability, calibration, material control, tool accountability, and configuration management requirements are consistently followed.
• Monitor recurring quality issues and identify patterns before they become larger operational or customer-facing problems.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of an Operational Excellence library of training materials, problem-solving tools and methods that will be deployed consistently across the company
• Discover and implement relevant, meaningful and actionable key performance indicators (KPIs)and OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to measure and track operational performance, with a focus on continuous improvement over time.
• Demonstrate to senior management on the progress of assembly and production goals dashboards, L&D achievements and process improvement emphasizing adherence to ISO quality standards.
• Analyze data to identify areas for improvement and implement corrective actions as needed.

Requirements for Success

• 5-10 years of experience in quality, manufacturing quality, operational excellence, or continuous improvement roles.
• Direct, recent and relevant experience in aerospace, defense, electronics, mechatronics, optics, precision manufacturing, or other highly regulated industries is strongly preferred.
• Experience with ERP/MRP systems (Genius ERP strongly preferred), document control systems, KPI reporting tools, and audit tracking tools.
• Post-secondary education in Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations, Supply Chain, or a related discipline.
• Experience working within ISO 9001 and preferably AS9100-certified environments.
• Experience leading internal and external audits, corrective actions, management reviews, and registrar relationships.
• Considerable experience with managing the Material Review Board/MRB process
• Experience supporting or participating in the transition from ISO 9001 to AS9100 would be considered a strong asset.
• Strong working knowledge of non-conformances, CAPAs, SCARs, root cause analysis, audits, supplier quality, process validation, and inspection planning.
• Familiarity with Lean, and continuous improvement methods.
• Comfortable working across Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, HR, Finance, and Operations teams.
• Able to build trust and influence without relying on formal authority.
• Above-average skills in MS SharePoint, VISIO, and EPDM/PLM systems
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple competing priorities at once.
• Lean, ISO Lead Auditor, Internal Auditor, or AS9100 auditor certifications would be considered a considerable asset.
• Comfortable working in an environment where priorities shift quickly and where practical problem-solving matters more than theory.

What Success Looks Like

In your first 12 to 18 months, success in this role would likely include:

• Completing a structured knowledge transfer and capturing key risks, open issues, known gaps, audit history and institutional knowledge that could otherwise be lost.
• Conducting an independent assessment of the current state of PVLabs' Quality Management System, operational controls, audit readiness, supplier quality, and production support processes.
• Developing a prioritized roadmap for improvement based on risk, business impact, customer commitments, audit findings, recurring non-conformances, and operational bottlenecks.
• Improving and further maturing our structure, organization, and usability across the QMS.
• Fewer recurring non-conformances and stronger corrective action discipline.
• Improving audit readiness and fewer last-minute scrambles ahead of customer or registrar audits.
• Defining and providing clarity around relevant KPI's, visibility around quality, supplier performance, and operational bottlenecks.
• Strengthening supplier accountability and consistent incoming quality.
• Improved cross-functional alignment between Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, and Production.
• Improved confidence in production readiness, release discipline, and schedule predictability.

What an Ideal Candidate Looks Like

• Notable achievements in Operations Management, Technician Accreditation (Electronics or Mechanical) and/or Training Certifications.
• Mastery of Production & Operations management in a precision engineering/mechatronics and component production/assembly environment. Preference will be for those within aerospace & defense sector, specifically any Controlled Goods/ITAR governed organization.
• Experience with scaling a production operations organization (people, process, physical space, tools and equipment) while concurrently scaling productivity gains.
• Deep curiosity and strong problem-solving capabilities – able to apply entirety of experiences to finding new solutions.
• Strong Influencing capabilities across all disciplines and levels within an organization
• Ability to work with both direction and ambiguity, and application of initiative / out-of-the-box thinking and problem solving.
• Proven knowledge and experience in MRP/ERP, and/or Kanban, inventory control and supply chain methodologies through applied knowledge of Lean manufacturing and Supply Chain principles.
• A strong command of production performance KPI's and outcome-driven success measures, monitoring and course-correction strategies
• Experience with regulatory compliance, quality standards (ISO) and planning development – including supply-chain, procurement, planning/scheduling, and management.
• 10+ years relevant professional experience in leading company-wide operational improvement/excellence programs

Comfortable with: complexity, rolling up your sleeves, wearing a couple different hats, operating in a highly collaborative environment, being a relationship expert, have an on-going CI mindset, ok with changing priorities, able to see the operation from various altitudes, and above all - balancing practicality with quality - then you will really enjoy this role.

***Please note that to be considered for employment at PVLabs, you must hold either Canadian Citizenship or Permanent Residency and be eligible to obtain and maintain a Canadian Security Clearance***