Quality Assurance Lead

Xenon is standing up a formal quality program, and this role owns it end to end - designing it, implementing it, and proving whether it works.

The program's eventual scope is the whole company: software, hardware, supplier quality, process discipline, and the contract quality requirements that come with delivering to the Government. The initial focus is software, because that is where the near-term delivery risk is concentrated. You should expect to spend your first year largely there and to be building the framework so that hardware, supplier, and manufacturing quality slot into the same system rather than becoming a separate bolt-on later.

This position reports to the President rather than to engineering, deliberately. Quality assurance only functions when it has the independence to raise a finding that engineering may not want to hear. You will have that independence, and you are expected to use it judiciously. The goal is a program that engineers respect and use, not one they route around.

What you will do

Establish the quality management system

• Design and document the quality management system, including the quality manual, policies, and governing procedures
• Determine the appropriate certification and appraisal posture for the company and build toward it on a realistic schedule; ISO 9001, AS9100, CMMI, or a defensible tailored equivalent
• Develop the Quality Assurance Program Plan and supporting artifacts required as contract deliverables
• Define quality requirements flowdown from prime contracts to internal processes and to subcontractors

Software quality (initial focus)

• Establish software quality standards covering coding conventions, peer review, static analysis, unit test coverage, and defect management
• Define software work product review and audit criteria and the evidence they produce
• Establish requirements-to-test traceability expectations and verify they are being met
• Direct the Software QA Engineer in implementing these standards within the development lifecycle

Hardware, supplier, and process quality (developing scope)

• Build inspection, first article, and workmanship standards appropriate to delivered hardware
• Establish supplier qualification, source inspection, and receiving inspection processes
• Implement counterfeit parts avoidance controls consistent with DFARS 252.246-7008 and SAE AS5553
• Stand up calibration, ESD control, and nonconforming material processes as hardware volume grows
• Establish configuration and data management quality controls

Measure effectiveness

• Define the metrics that indicate whether the program is working inclduing defect density, defect removal efficiency, escape rate, first-pass yield, review effectiveness, corrective action cycle time, cost of quality
• Build the collection and reporting mechanisms so metrics come from the work rather than from a manual survey
• Report quality performance to leadership with honest interpretation, including where the numbers are not yet trustworthy
• Use the data to target improvement effort rather than to distribute blame

Audit, corrective action, and improvement

• Plan and conduct internal process and product audits
• Own the corrective and preventive action system, including root cause analysis methodology and closure verification
• Conduct management reviews and drive continuous improvement activity
• Serve as the quality interface to DCMA, customer quality representatives, and external auditors

Customer and program interface

• Support proposal responses addressing quality approach and contract quality requirements
• Participate in program reviews and represent quality status and risk
• Manage government source inspection and acceptance activities where required