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Mattel

Global toy and family entertainment company.

Quality Engineering Manager

Quality EngineeringConfirmed live in the last 24 hours
Full-timeMontreal, QC, CanadaNo salary listedIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

  • Demonstrated interpersonal and leadership skills, with the ability to lead, coach, develop, and engage technical professionals.
  • Demonstrated knowledge of regulatory standards applicable to consumer products, particularly toys or products for children.
  • Strong technical judgment and the ability to assess complex product quality, safety, regulatory, manufacturing, and consumer issues and make informed, risk-based decisions.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, including using data to identify solutions and implement effective actions.
  • Ability to influence cross-functional teams and leaders without direct authority.
  • Ability to balance product safety, compliance, quality, consumer experience, business needs, costs, and schedules while maintaining appropriate quality standards.
  • Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, team priorities, and resources simultaneously while meeting critical deadlines.
  • High personal and professional integrity, reliability, sound work ethic, judgment, and accountability.
  • Strong written and verbal communication, listening, and presentation abilities, including explaining complex technical issues clearly and concisely.
  • Ability to build relationships across functions, geographic regions, and organizational levels.
  • Collaborative, results-oriented leadership and ability to promote accountability while maintaining effective working relationships.
  • Demonstrated ability to develop others through coaching, feedback, technical mentoring, and meaningful development opportunities.
  • Adaptability and ability to adjust priorities and focus as departmental, product-development, and business needs evolve.
  • Bachelor's degree in industrial, electrical, mechanical, or materials engineering, or a related technical discipline.
  • More than six years of progressive experience in product development, product engineering, manufacturing, or quality; experience in the toy, children's product, or consumer product industries is preferred.
  • Prior experience leading engineers, technical teams, or large cross-functional programs.
  • Knowledge of global safety standards and regulatory requirements applicable to toys and consumer products.
  • Strong knowledge of quality management system (QMS) structure, procedures, and implementation.
  • Experience with product-development processes from initial design through production and post-market support.
  • Knowledge of risk-management principles and tools, including failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), fault tree analysis (FTA), preliminary hazard analysis (PHA), and other structured risk-assessment methodologies.
  • Knowledge of engineering and quality tools, including statistical analysis, cause-and-effect analysis, root-cause analysis, process mapping, sampling methods, and engineering studies.
  • Experience interpreting quality and product-performance data and using statistical analyses to support engineering decisions.
  • Experience collaborating with internal and/or third-party product-testing laboratories.
  • Experience supporting global manufacturing, supplier, and product-development organizations.
  • Proficiency in Microsoft Office, project-management tools, and statistical-analysis software such as Minitab.

Responsibilities

  • Define and implement quality-engineering strategies for assigned brands, product categories, or functional areas to support business objectives and consumer expectations.
  • Ensure consistent application of product-quality, safety, risk-management, reliability, and regulatory-compliance requirements throughout the product-development cycle.
  • Maintain knowledge of global regulations and standards for toys and consumer products and industry best practices, and ensure the team understands and applies them.
  • Monitor evolving regulatory requirements, standards, technologies, and industry practices, and support implementation of applicable changes within the organization.
  • Identify systemic product and process risks in assigned areas and develop mitigation strategies with appropriate cross-functional partners.
  • Apply quality-engineering expertise and lessons learned to contribute to the development and improvement of organizational practices and processes.
  • Lead, coach, and develop a team of quality engineers, strengthening their capabilities in quality systems, regulatory requirements, technical problem-solving, risk management, data analysis, and decision-making.
  • Set clear team objectives, priorities, expectations, and responsibilities and align them with quality-engineering and business objectives.
  • Provide ongoing coaching and feedback, manage performance, and support team members' career development.
  • Develop the team's technical and leadership capabilities through mentoring, challenging assignments, knowledge sharing, and development planning.
  • Assess team capabilities and resource needs and allocate engineering resources according to product complexity and risk, workload, and business priorities.
  • Support recruiting, onboarding, development, succession planning, and retention of quality-engineering talent.
  • Create an environment that promotes technical curiosity, collaboration, accountability, continuous learning, and appropriate escalation of product-quality and safety concerns.
  • Build strong partnerships with Marketing, Design, Product Development, Product Safety, Regulatory Compliance, Quality Data Analytics, Play Labs, Manufacturing, laboratories, and other partner functions.
  • Ensure Quality Engineering is appropriately involved throughout product development to influence decisions affecting quality, safety, compliance, reliability, and consumer satisfaction.
  • Anticipate downstream impacts, opportunities, and risks, and promote appropriate cross-functional collaboration and communication for effective resolution.
  • Influence cross-functional teams and leaders to make balanced, risk-based decisions while maintaining consumer safety and regulatory compliance as fundamental requirements.
  • Provide Quality Engineering leadership for significant post-market issues involving product quality, safety, compliance, manufacturing, or product performance.
  • Establish effective communication and escalation practices so significant risks are appropriately communicated to Quality Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Promote objective, data-driven decision-making within the Quality Engineering team.
  • Ensure engineers appropriately identify, collect, analyze, and interpret data that supports decisions about product quality and risk.
  • Review technical analyses and recommendations for complex or higher-risk issues and ensure conclusions are technically sound, clearly communicated, and properly documented.
  • Use data from product testing, consumer complaints, returns, quality-data analytics, Play Labs results, manufacturing performance, and other available sources to identify trends, emerging risks, and improvement opportunities.
  • Establish and track appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) and quality measures for assigned areas, and ensure significant trends and issues result in necessary action.
  • Communicate significant quality trends, risks, and recommendations to Quality Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Provide technical leadership and oversight for product investigations, root-cause analyses, engineering studies, sampling strategies, risk assessments, and product verification and validation activities.
  • Ensure appropriate use of investigation and problem-solving methodologies such as Ishikawa (Fishbone) diagrams, the 5 Whys, FMEA, and other applicable root-cause analysis tools.
  • Oversee and guide development and maintenance of product requirements documents (PRDs), primary concern documents (PCDs), test strategies, and other Quality Engineering documents.
  • Ensure product concepts, intended play patterns, reasonably foreseeable uses and misuses, consumer interactions, and identified risks are translated into robust testing and verification strategies.
  • Collaborate with internal laboratories and third-party testing organizations to ensure test strategies adequately address regulatory requirements, identified risks, and product-performance expectations.
  • Ensure investigations and corrective actions are complete, technically sound, properly documented, and completed on schedule.
  • Provide technical guidance on the appropriate application and interpretation of statistical analyses, sampling plans, engineering studies, and quality data.
  • Ensure proper execution of risk-management activities and use of tools such as FMEA, fault tree analysis (FTA), preliminary hazard analysis (PHA), and other relevant methodologies.
  • Maintain thorough knowledge of internal quality management system (QMS) procedures and ensure the team follows applicable processes and requirements.
  • Ensure product knowledge, foreseeable consumer use, and play patterns are considered in Quality Engineering decisions and product-risk assessments.
  • Use quality-system data, consumer feedback, test results, product returns, manufacturing performance, and post-market information to understand product and process performance.
  • Identify opportunities to improve product quality, reliability, durability, and consumer satisfaction using available data and lessons learned.
  • Lead or support investigation and resolution of significant post-market product quality and safety issues in assigned areas.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to incorporate lessons from consumer feedback and field performance into current and future product development.
  • Promote a culture of quality, consumer safety, accountability, continuous learning, and shared responsibility within the team and cross-functional partnerships.
  • Identify and lead continuous-improvement initiatives in assigned areas using appropriate methodologies and tools.
  • Evaluate Quality Engineering processes and identify opportunities to improve effectiveness, consistency, scalability, and efficiency.
  • Lead cross-functional improvement initiatives and ensure improvements remain compliant with regulatory requirements, standards, and internal QMS requirements.
  • Use KPIs, quality metrics, lessons learned, and benchmarking to identify improvement opportunities.
  • Promote adoption and sharing of best practices among Quality Engineering teams.
  • Develop business cases for significant improvement opportunities when appropriate and communicate expected impacts on quality, operations, consumers, and the business.

Desired Qualifications

  • Formal personnel-management experience is preferred.
  • Knowledge of human-factors principles and usability engineering and their application to toys and consumer products is an asset.

About the Company

Mattel

Global toy and family entertainment company.

Mattel is a global play and family entertainment company that owns iconic brands such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and UNO, offering toys, content, consumer products, digital experiences, and live events. Its products come to life through brands and franchises that create physical toys, media content, and themed experiences, often via owned properties or licensed partnerships with entertainment companies. Mattel stands out with a diversified catalog of enduring franchises and cross-category play experiences that combine toys with media and consumer products. Its goal is to empower generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential by treating play as a key path to the future, engaging consumers through authentic franchise brands and immersive experiences.

Company size
10,001+
Company stage
IPO
Headquarters
El Segundo, CA
Founded
1945

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