Quality and Customer Assurance Director

Building customer confidence. Assuring quality. Preventing recurrence.

Quality is about more than compliance. It is about building customer confidence, preventing problems before they happen and making sure that, when things do go wrong, we respond quickly, learn from them and prevent them from happening again.

As Quality and Customer Assurance Director, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Quality across Scottish Leather Group. You’ll lead the transformation of Quality from a predominantly technical and compliance-led function into a customer confidence and business performance system.

Working across our operations and with customers, suppliers and senior leaders, you’ll establish a clear Group-wide approach to quality, strengthen prevention and ensure quality is designed into our products, processes and launches from the outset. You’ll also be the senior quality lead when major customer issues arise, bringing clarity, pace and sound judgement when it matters most.

This is a senior leadership role for someone who combines strong technical credibility with commercial judgement, customer focus and the ability to influence change across a complex manufacturing environment.

In this role you will:

• Shape and deliver the Group Quality Strategy, translating it into clear priorities, measures and actions.
• Lead our approach to customer quality, ensuring major issues are managed with urgency, transparency and robust evidence.
• Strengthen quality by design, embedding effective quality gates throughout product, process and customer launches.
• Partner with Operations and Technical teams to improve process capability, right-first-time performance and quality at source.
• Establish a consistent approach to problem solving, root cause analysis and corrective action, ensuring learning prevents recurrence.
• Lead the continued development and effectiveness of our Quality Management System, product conformity, audit and compliance arrangements.
• Oversee laboratory and product assurance capability, ensuring confidence in testing, measurement and supporting records.
• Strengthen supplier quality alongside Procurement and relevant technical teams.
• Develop meaningful quality data and scorecards that identify risk early and turn insight into action.
• Lead, coach and develop our Quality and Laboratory teams while building quality capability and accountability across the wider business.

You’re someone who sees quality differently.

You understand that Quality cannot simply inspect problems out at the end of a process. You focus on prevention, strong processes and clear accountability. You know how to protect the customer quickly while establishing the facts, determining responsibility fairly and making decisions that support long-term customer trust.

You’ll be comfortable challenging established ways of working and escalating risk when needed, but you’ll do it constructively, using evidence and bringing people with you.

• You’ll bring substantial senior quality leadership experience from a complex manufacturing environment, ideally within automotive, aviation, rail or another demanding regulated or design-led sector.
• You’ll have a degree-level qualification, or equivalent professional experience, in Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, Materials Science or a related discipline.
• You’ll have a strong track record of managing senior customer quality relationships and significant quality incidents.
• You’ll bring demonstrable experience of Quality Management Systems, product conformity, audit, change control and customer-specific requirements.
• You’ll have strong capability in structured problem solving, process capability, measurement systems and risk-based assurance.
• You’ll be confident using data to identify trends, understand risk and turn insight into clear decisions and actions.
• You’ll have experience leading and developing multidisciplinary Quality and Laboratory teams.
• You’ll be calm under pressure, commercially balanced and comfortable influencing senior operational and commercial leaders.
• Above all, you’ll have the judgement and courage to surface risk early, challenge constructively and ensure actions are followed through.

The impact you will have:

As Quality and Customer Assurance Director, you’ll have the opportunity to fundamentally shape how quality operates across Scottish Leather Group.  Your work will help build deeper customer confidence, strengthen our approach to prevention and ensure that quality is embedded throughout our products and processes rather than treated as a final check.  You’ll help create an environment where manufacturing and functional teams own the quality of their work, supported by a Quality function that provides strong assurance, constructive challenge and expertise.  When significant issues arise, your leadership will help ensure we respond with speed, facts, fairness and clear ownership, protecting both our customers and the long-term interests of the business.

Ready to be part of the story?

If you’re an experienced Quality leader who can combine technical expertise with customer focus, commercial judgement and the ability to lead meaningful change, we’d love to hear from you.

Join us as Quality and Customer Assurance Director and help us build customer confidence, assure quality and prevent recurrence.

This role is based at our Bridge of Weir site, with regular travel to Group, customer and supplier locations.