Principal Advanced Quality Engineer - Textiles

Duties And Responsibilities

• Utilize advanced engineering expertise in the Textiles field to contribute to the development and qualification of innovative products
• Interface with Front End Innovation (FEI) team to adapt highly innovative textile materials to production
• Participate in user need research to identify “critical to quality” (CtQ) requirements on materials selection, design features, and construction methods for knit and sewn products
• Collaborate with Engineering and Marketing to define the products' specifications leading in all aspects of performance, quality, reliability, and testing
• Lead Risk Assessments (Design and Manufacturing) for NPD projects during the product development cycle
• Establish process capability expectations for textile production at finished goods factories and material facilities as required
• Ensure timely failure reporting and lead root cause analysis and effective corrective/preventative actions (FRACA)
• Test/Analysis Lead development of capability at multiple test laboratories implementing new and innovative test methods to better quantify product performance
• Own interpretation of global textile performance standards and drive correlation between testing at internal labs and regulatory labs
• Develop test plans and prove out test methods based on new or established product designs to ensure products meet customer requirements
• Perform DOE to support Engineering in their understanding of quality concerns and improvements to design
• Analyze, draw conclusions, report and present product information utilizing statistical techniques such as Weibull analysis, reliability distributions and matrices
• Communicate concise, logical, written conclusions from experiments based on data analysis
• Mentor junior level AQEs in developing CtQ requirements, test methodologies and design, setting production specifications and creation of design of experiments

Job Requirements

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering or educational equivalent field
• 10+ years of experience directly supporting textiles or soft goods product quality
• Experience including training in quality engineering fundamentals and proven experience leading a primary function within a project team
• Proven experience leading a primary function within a project team
• Previous relevant experience with Design of Experiments, life data analysis, and other related statistical tools and software (i.e. Minitab, Reliasoft)
• Skills in mentoring other employees in statistical techniques
• Written and verbal communication skills and creative problem-solving capabilities
• Ability to travel 20% of the time is required (travel includes Domestic and International)
• Preferred: ASQ Reliability Engineering Certification (ASQ-CRE) or the ability and desire to achieve certification
• Preferred: Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) or Six Sigma experience