Purpose of the role:
The Quality Engineer – (Ink Manufacturing & Supply Quality) is responsible for ensuring robust quality assurance and quality control across the full material lifecycle at industrial scale, with primary accountability for incoming raw material quality assurance, including supplier quality, Certificate of Analysis (CoA) verification, and batch release, as well as finished product quality control and assurance for manufactured inks and pastes. The role also owns the quality performance of materials supplied to both internal production and external license partners, ensuring all materials consistently meet defined specifications at high volume, are reliably released to production, and perform effectively in downstream processes.
Operating within a high-volume manufacturing environment, the position plays a critical role in driving the transition from inspection-based QC to a proactive QA approach, establishing strong process capability, supplier robustness, and statistical control across both inbound and outbound material flows. This includes full ownership of incoming raw material quality systems, supplier qualification, CoA validation, and batch release, alongside end-to-end responsibility for finished ink quality, including batch testing and release, specification control, and meeting customer and license partner acceptance criteria.
The role is also accountable for the external quality performance of supplied materials, while actively driving supplier quality improvements through audits, PPAP, and corrective actions. In addition, the position ensures process capability and statistical control across high-volume production and leads the resolution of non-conformances, deviations, and customer complaints.
Knowledge and skills required for the role:
- Experience in high-volume chemical or materials manufacturing environments (e.g. slurry, coating, or similar systems)
- Proven track record in quality engineering within industrial-scale production, with clear responsibility for product quality at volume (not pilot or R&D scale)
- Strong experience in incoming material quality assurance and supplier quality management, including qualification, auditing, performance management, and non-conformance resolution
- Experience ensuring batch-to-batch consistency at scale, including management of raw material variability
- Deep understanding of structure–process–performance relationships in chemical systems, with the ability to apply this to identify and control material and process variability in industrial manufacturing environments
- Experience managing quality risks during process scale-up and industrialisation, ensuring robust transfer from development into stable, repeatable high-volume production
- Proven experience in quality engineering tools and methodologies, including 8D problem solving, root cause analysis, PPAP, APQP, FMEA, and MSA
- Hands on experience analytical and characterisation techniques for chemical/material quality verification, and their application within validation and release process
- Proficient in data analysis and reporting tools, with the ability to support KPI reporting and data-driven decision making
