Quality Engineering Team Leader

Job Description:

Brooks Instrument (www.brooksinstrument.com), an industry leader in flow and pressure instrumentation for critical applications, is seeking candidates for a Quality Engineering Team Leader position that will be based at the company headquarters in Hatfield, Pennsylvania (suburban Philadelphia). The company has manufacturing locations in Pennsylvania, Hungary, Malaysia and Korea, and also maintains sales and service offices throughout the world. Our high-tech products are used in laboratory and process applications in end markets such as: oil & gas, petrochemical, medical devices, waste water, life sciences, and analytical instruments. 

Brooks is a division of ITW (Illinois Tool Works), a fortune 200 company. ITW is one of the world’s leading diversified manufacturers of specialized industrial equipment, consumables, and related service businesses. The company has operations in 56 countries and employs over 50,000 employees. These talented employees, many of whom have specialized engineering or scientific expertise, contribute to ITW’s global leadership in innovation. The company is proud of its broad portfolio of nearly 10,000 active patents, and is focused on fully leveraging its highly differentiated business model to deliver solid growth with consistent best-in-class margins and return on capital.

Basic Function

The Quality Engineering Team Lead is a hands-on technical leader responsible for supporting the quality, reliability, and continuous improvement of Brooks Instrument industrial products and related manufacturing processes at the Hatfield, Pennsylvania site. The role performs core quality engineering work while providing day-to-day direction, prioritization, training, and technical guidance to hourly Quality Technicians and others supporting quality processes.

Working closely with Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Customer Service, and other cross-functional partners, this individual ensures that products and processes meet customer, regulatory, and company requirements. The successful candidate will be self-directed, highly organized, and comfortable balancing immediate production needs with corrective action, prevention, and longer-term process improvement.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Serve as the working lead for day-to-day Industrial Products quality activities, remaining actively engaged in technical work, production support, investigations, and problem resolution.

• Establish daily priorities, coordinate assignments, balance workload, and provide work direction to hourly Quality Technicians and other personnel supporting inspection and quality processes.

• Provide technical coaching, training, and support to Quality Technicians; reinforce standard work, consistent decision-making, accurate documentation, and timely escalation of issues.

• Monitor completion and quality of assigned work, identify coverage or resource concerns, and communicate priorities, risks, and performance trends to the Quality Manager.

• Support the Quality Manager with onboarding, skills development, qualification/certification needs, performance feedback, and continuous improvement of team effectiveness.

• Promote a collaborative, accountable, customer-focused culture and model professional communication across shifts and functions

Quality Engineering and Process Support

• Perform quality engineering activities and audits, and establish or maintain quality standards for incoming material, in-process production, and finished industrial products.

• Provide timely floor support for product and process nonconformances; lead structured containment, investigation, root-cause analysis, and corrective action with cross-functional teams.

• Review and disposition discrepant material in accordance with system requirements, ensuring product quality, traceability, and appropriate risk-based decisions.

• Review design, manufacturing, inspection, and test documentation to confirm that applicable quality-system, customer, and contract requirements are met.

• Verify and approve applicable operation instructions and inspection documentation, and ensure affected employees understand the requirements and their application.

• Develop and maintain inspection methods, sampling plans, control plans, forms, and instructions used to record, evaluate, and report quality data.

• Determine whether manufacturing processes and equipment are capable of meeting requirements through capability studies, control charts, measurement results, and other statistical data.

• Coordinate annual product validations and other qualification or compliance activities for assigned product lines.

• Initiate engineering deviation requests and product change notices, as appropriate, and provide quality input for sustaining engineering and product/process changes.

Customer, Corrective Action, and Quality-System Responsibilities

• Coordinate timely investigation and resolution of customer quality issues for Industrial Products, including customer communication and status updates when assigned.

• Analyze customer complaints and field failures; lead or coordinate 8D, corrective and preventive action, failure analysis, follow-up, effectiveness verification, and reporting.

• Track and follow up on CAPA, customer complaints, failure analysis, and related cases in the applicable electronic quality management system, including TrackWise where used.

Data, Metrics, and Continuous Improvement

• Collect, analyze, and report operational and quality data to improve performance and reduce the cost of poor quality.

• Develop, monitor, and communicate key measures such as first-pass yield, scrap, rework, customer complaints, process-audit results, and corrective-action aging or effectiveness.

• Apply statistical methods and quality tools - including SPC, Pareto analysis, histograms, capability analysis, and trend charts - to identify variation, prioritize risk, and drive sustainable improvement.

• Prepare and present quality performance, complex analyses, recurring issues, and recommended actions in regular operational and quality review meetings.

• Lead or participate in continuous improvement initiatives focused on product quality, process discipline, flow, efficiency, and prevention of defects.

• Serve as the Quality representative on applicable new-product-development, sustaining-engineering, and cross-functional improvement teams.

Safety and Other Responsibilities

• Maintain and enhance department safety practices in alignment with Brooks' zero-accident safety philosophy and applicable site requirements.

• Ensure quality activities are performed safely and that identified safety concerns are promptly addressed or escalated.

• Perform other duties and project-specific tasks as assigned, including first article inspection support, qualification-test failure analysis, and customer-required documentation.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline required; Quality, Industrial, Mechanical, Manufacturing, or a related engineering field preferred.

• Five or more years of progressive quality engineering experience in a manufacturing environment; experience supporting industrial, electromechanical, instrumentation, or similarly complex products preferred.

• Demonstrated experience leading work, coordinating priorities, training others, or providing technical direction in a production or quality environment required; prior formal supervisory experience is helpful but not required.

• Experience working within an ISO 9001 or other third-party certified quality-management system required.

• Experience leading root-cause analysis, corrective action, nonconforming-material disposition, process audits, and cross-functional problem solving required.

• ASQ Certified Quality Engineer or other relevant quality certification preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Strong working knowledge of quality engineering principles, statistical methods, process capability, control plans, sampling, risk assessment, and continuous improvement tools.

• Ability to interpret engineering drawings, specifications, test results, inspection data, and customer quality requirements.

• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to distinguish immediate containment from true corrective and preventive action.

• Ability to organize and prioritize work for self and others, respond effectively to changing production needs, and drive multiple activities to closure.

• Effective leadership, coaching, and interpersonal skills; able to build credibility with hourly employees, engineers, managers, customers, and external auditors.

• Clear and professional verbal and written communication, including the ability to summarize technical findings and present quality data to varied audiences.

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook; experience with Minitab or similar statistical software preferred.

• Experience with electronic quality-management systems and data/reporting tools; TrackWise experience preferred.

• Diplomacy and sound judgment when communicating with customers, suppliers, registrars, assessors, and other external contacts.

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a dynamic, cross-functional manufacturing environment with a strong focus on customer satisfaction.

• Ability to support business needs across shifts and travel domestically or internationally on an occasional basis.

• Review customer documentation and requirements, including special quality, inspection, documentation, or copy-exact expectations, and ensure appropriate fulfillment.

• Participate in customer visits, surveys, audits, and quality reviews; represent Brooks professionally and diplomatically with customers, suppliers, registrars, and assessors.

• Support maintenance of ISO 9001 documentation, internal quality-system audits, closure of findings and nonconformances, and Quality Certificate activities as needed.

• Support supplier-quality issue resolution in partnership with Supply Chain and Supplier Quality resources.

Benefits

Our employees enjoy competitive, merit-based salary plus excellent benefits including:

• Health and dental insurance

• Company Paid Life Insurance

• Short and Long Term Disability

• 401K plan with generous company match

• Vacation, personal days and holidays

• Continuing education reimbursement program

• Flexible spending accounts 

The opportunity to join a well established (80 years in business) yet dynamically changing organization that works together as a team to meet the challenges of satisfying customers’ needs and managing rapid growth to better compete in a global marketplace

ITW is an equal opportunity employer. We value our colleagues’ unique perspectives, experiences and ideas and create workplaces where everyone can develop their careers and perform to their full potential. 

As an equal employment opportunity employer, ITW is committed to equal employment opportunity and fair treatment for employees, beginning with the hiring process and continuing through all aspects of the employment relationship. 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, protected Veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.