What are the responsibilities and job description for the Customer Quality Engineer position at Sterling Engineering?
Title: Customer Quality Engineer
Location: [Insert Location]
Hire Type: Direct Hire
Salary: $80,000 - $105,000/year
The Customer Quality Engineer is responsible for leading customer-focused quality assurance efforts, ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction through timely and effective root cause analysis, corrective actions, and continuous improvement initiatives. This role manages all aspects of customer audits and serves as the frontline contact for customer quality concerns. The Customer Quality Supervisor also oversees the implementation of standard Return Material Authorization (RMA) and Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) processes at the site level and ensures consistency across functions.
Job Duties:
Location: [Insert Location]
Hire Type: Direct Hire
Salary: $80,000 - $105,000/year
The Customer Quality Engineer is responsible for leading customer-focused quality assurance efforts, ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction through timely and effective root cause analysis, corrective actions, and continuous improvement initiatives. This role manages all aspects of customer audits and serves as the frontline contact for customer quality concerns. The Customer Quality Supervisor also oversees the implementation of standard Return Material Authorization (RMA) and Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) processes at the site level and ensures consistency across functions.
Job Duties:
- Serve as the main site-level liaison for customer quality issues, including RMA investigations, root cause analysis, and communication with Sales and Engineering teams.
- Analyze warranty claims, audit findings, and quality performance metrics to identify trends.
- Supervise and guide a team of quality technicians or engineers focused on finished product, out-of-the-box audits, customer requirements, and outgoing quality.
- Share regular reports of customer quality performance, scorecards, KPIs, inspection results, and process monitoring with the site team.
- Implement and maintain customer quality processes aligned with corporate standards (e.g., RMA, RCCA, Apollo, A3, PDCA).
- Monitor and drive improvements in customer complaint resolution time, RMA cycle time, and customer satisfaction.
- Lead internal cross-functional teams to resolve customer-reported issues, identify systemic root causes, and implement sustainable corrective actions.
- Initiate the revision process and engineer solutions using tools such as DFMEA, PFMEA, control plans, etc.
- Maintain and improve systems for outgoing inspection, product traceability, and data analysis (SPC, Pareto, etc.).
- Champion lessons learned from customer feedback across departments to drive product and process improvements.
- Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Quality, or related field, or equivalent experience.
- 2 years in Quality Assurance, CX, CEX, Customer Quality, or Customer Experience roles in a heavy-automation, fast-paced manufacturing environment.
- Quality Engineer Certification.
- Green Belt (or higher) Certification
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives with technical expertise and leadership capability.
- Ability to interpret and understand regulatory requirements and customer requirements.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present technical information clearly to internal and external stakeholders.
- Strong root cause analysis and problem-solving abilities (8D, 5-Why, Fishbone).
- Proficient in statistical process control and analysis (SPC, Minitab, Excel).
- Working knowledge of QMS (ISO 9001 or equivalent), FMEA, and CAPA.
- Ability to collaborate across functions (Engineering, Sales, Operations, IT).
Salary : $80,000 - $105,000