Senior Director, Quality & Validation

About the role

The Senior Director, Quality & Validation oversees all quality control, assurance, and validation across all products. They work with R&D on the product quality-approval process, partner on internal testing to define acceptance criteria, and manage external testing for new products and reformulations prior to commercialization.

Responsibilities

• Direct external product testing and validation activity including consumer-performance, sensory and in-use evaluations
• Establish and maintain validation protocols, standards, and driver-aware acceptance criteria
• Commission and manage consumer, clinical, and performance studies from external laboratories under defined service-level agreements
• Oversee the Quality Control / Quality Assurance function, integrating manufacturing quality with consumer-performance validation and informing release decisions
• Partner with Regulatory on the boundary between product-performance validation and claims substantiation, routing marketing-claim testing appropriately
• Build, monitor, and report consumer-quality and validation KPIs (e.g., validation cycle time, first-time-right at launch, consumer-complaint trends) and lead related root-cause investigations and corrective actions
• Ensure testing and validation operations comply with applicable quality and laboratory standards and good practices (e.g., GLP, ISO 22716 where applicable)
• Lead, coach, and develop the Quality & Validation organization, including the Quality Control / QA team

Requirements

• Proven ability to lead a consumer-performance validation function, including setting acceptance criteria and managing the product quality-approval process
• Strong knowledge of consumer-performance, sensory, and claims-support testing methods for personal care or hair care products (e.g., half-head studies, home-use tests, trained panels)
• Working knowledge of cosmetic quality and laboratory standards (e.g., GLP, ISO 22716) and the U.S. and international context for product-performance and claims testing
• Experience commissioning studies from external CROs under service-level agreements
• Strong data-analysis, statistics, and root-cause problem-solving skills (e.g., CAPA, FMEA)
• Demonstrated people-leadership and cross-functional influence with Quality Control, R&D, Regulatory, Operations, Marketing, and Legal
• Excellent communication skills (verbal and written) and the ability to operate in a fast-paced environment
• Experience overseeing a Quality Control / QA function — batch release and GMP / ISO 22716 quality systems — in addition to consumer-performance validation