Vice President - Product Excellence

The Vice President of Product Excellence is a senior executive responsible for ensuring the quality, reliability, and compliance of all embedded electronics, firmware, and software components in the company's consumer products. This leader will shape quality strategies that align with product innovation, regulatory compliance, and customer satisfaction, overseeing quality functions across hardware electronics and digital technologies.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership

• Develop and implement a comprehensive quality strategy for electrical systems and software across all product lines.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Operations, and Compliance to ensure quality is integrated early and throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Represent the Quality function in executive decision-making and strategic planning processes.

Quality Assurance & Compliance

• Establish and enforce rigorous testing and validation protocols for embedded systems, connectivity modules, firmware, and companion apps.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations (e.g., UL, FCC, CE, ISO 26262, IEC 61508, GDPR, cybersecurity standards).
• Maintain a robust software and hardware quality management system that supports traceability, version control, and defect tracking.

Product Lifecycle Management

• Drive quality risk assessments during concept, design, prototyping, and launch phases.
• Oversee validation of hardware-software integration and product interoperability.
• Lead root cause analysis, corrective/preventive actions (CAPA), and quality incident resolution.

Data-Driven Quality

• Leverage analytics, field data, and user feedback to identify and resolve quality issues.
• Use KPIs and dashboards to track defect rates, test coverage, field failure rates, and software performance.

Leadership & Team Development

• Build and lead a cross-functional team of electrical quality engineers, software QA, and systems testers.
• Champion a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement within the quality organization.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
• 15+ years of experience in hardware/software quality engineering, with 5+ years in a senior leadership role.
• Proven expertise in embedded systems, IoT devices, mobile applications, and consumer product development.
• In-depth knowledge of QA methodologies, standards, and tools for both hardware and software (e.g., ISO 9001, ISTQB, Agile testing, JIRA, Jenkins, automated testing).
• Strong knowledge of product safety, EMC, and cybersecurity standards.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with connected products, smart home devices, wearables, or other electronics-heavy consumer goods.
• Certifications in Quality (ASQ, ISTQB), Six Sigma, or Agile/Scrum frameworks.
• Experience managing distributed quality teams and global manufacturing partners.