The posting
The Associate Director, Field Quality will lead Commercial HVAC field quality and warranty performance, with accountability for improving warranty PPM, reducing warranty cost, accelerating resolution of emerging field issues, and strengthening customer satisfaction. The leader will mobilize cross-functional Engineering, Manufacturing, Service, and Quality resources to address critical job-site issues and implement sustainable corrective actions. The role will also lead a team of Senior Quality Engineers and Quality Managers while advancing process improvement, analytics, and digital transformation across the field-quality organization.
Key Responsibilities
Warranty & Field Quality Performance
- Own and drive Commercial HVAC warranty quality performance, with primary focus on warranty PPM, warranty cost, recurrence reduction, and field issue resolution.
- Establish performance metrics and operating rhythms to identify adverse warranty trends and emerging quality concerns.
- Lead structured reviews of warranty and field-quality data to identify systemic issues, prioritize improvement opportunities, and drive corrective actions.
- Partner with Engineering and Manufacturing teams to translate field learnings into sustainable product and process improvements.
- Drive prevention of repeat and recurring failures through disciplined root-cause analysis and corrective-action processes.
Critical Job-Site & Early Warning Response
- Provide quality leadership for critical job-site issues, coordinating appropriate engineering and technical resources to support rapid customer resolution.
- Lead cross-functional teams to contain field issues, determine root cause, implement corrective actions, and verify effectiveness.
- Establish urgency and accountability around early warning issues, ensuring potential systemic problems are identified, escalated, and closed quickly.
- Ensure lessons learned from field issues are incorporated into product, manufacturing, service, and quality processes.
Customer Quality & Voice of Customer
- Serve as a senior quality interface for key Commercial HVAC customers on significant field and product-quality matters.
- Lead Voice of Customer activities related to field quality, reliability, and warranty concerns.
- Provide clear, fact-based updates to customers regarding containment, investigation progress, corrective actions, and issue closure.
- Build customer confidence through transparency, technical rigor, responsiveness, and demonstrated corrective action.
- Translate customer feedback and field experience into actionable priorities for Engineering, Operations, Service, and Quality teams.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Lead complex quality initiatives involving Engineering, Manufacturing, Service, Supply Chain, Product Management, and other business functions.
- Establish clear problem statements, ownership, milestones, and closure criteria for major field-quality issues. Drive accountability with engineering, factories, suppliers and sales.
- Facilitate rapid decision-making and escalation when customer impact or warranty exposure requires additional leadership attention.
- Provide senior leadership with concise updates on warranty performance, major field issues, risks, corrective actions, and improvement priorities.
Team Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead and develop a team of Senior Quality Engineers and Quality Managers, creating a culture of accountability, customer focus, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
- Establish priorities and objectives that align individual and team activities with Commercial HVAC quality and warranty goals.
- Develop organizational capability in structured problem solving, field investigation, root-cause analysis, data analytics, and customer communication.
- Promote collaboration across field, factory, engineering, and business teams.
Process Improvement & Digital Transformation
- Drive continuous improvement of field-quality and warranty processes to increase speed, effectiveness, and consistency.
- Champion digital transformation of quality processes, including improved analytics, dashboards, workflow automation, and early-warning capabilities.
- Improve the use of warranty and field data to identify trends, accelerate root-cause identification, and enable proactive rather than reactive quality management.
- Standardize best practices and develop scalable processes for field issue management and corrective-action closure.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Operations, or a technical discipline.
- 10+ years of experience in quality, engineering, manufacturing, product reliability, field service, or technical function.
Preferred Qualifications
- Demonstrated experience leading complex product-quality, warranty, or field-performance issues.
- Experience leading cross-functional technical teams through containment, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and issue closure.
- Experience managing and developing engineering or quality professionals.
- Demonstrated experience working directly with customers on complex technical or quality issues.
- Experience within Commercial HVAC, industrial equipment, building systems, or complex engineered products.
- Strong understanding of warranty management, field quality, reliability, and continuous-improvement methodologies.
- Experience with structured problem-solving approaches such as 8D, DMAIC, 5-Why, Fishbone, FMEA, and corrective/preventive action (CAPA).
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to convert warranty and field data into business priorities and corrective actions.
- Experience leading digital transformation, data analytics, dashboarding, or workflow-automation initiatives.
- Strong executive and customer communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical issues clearly and concisely.
- Ability to influence across functions and organizational levels without relying solely on direct authority.
Leadership Competencies
- Customer Focus: Understands customer impact and creates urgency around resolving quality concerns.
- Results Orientation: Drives measurable improvement in warranty PPM, warranty cost, recurrence, and corrective-action closure.
- Technical Leadership: Brings structure and rigor to complex field and product-quality problems.
- Cross-Functional Influence: Aligns Engineering, Operations, Service, Quality, and business stakeholders around common objectives.
- Develops Talent: Builds a high-performing field-quality organization and develops future quality leaders.
- Continuous Improvement: Challenges existing processes and uses data and digital capabilities to improve speed and effectiveness.
- Executive Communication: Distills complex field and warranty problems into clear risks, actions, decisions, and business impacts for leadership.
