Project Quality Engineer

Job Summary

Purpose and Objective

To ensure firmware and software products are developed and released with the highest levels of quality, reliability, compliance, and customer satisfaction.

• Embed quality requirements throughout the product development lifecycle, from concept to release.
• Work collaboratively with engineering, project, manufacturing, and supplier teams to ensure successful product delivery.
• Proactively identify, assess, and mitigate quality and project risks before they impact customers or schedules.
• Ensure compliance with customer, industry, regulatory, and company quality standards.
• Drive defect prevention, root cause analysis, and corrective actions to improve product performance.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives that enhance development processes, product quality, and team effectiveness.
• Monitor quality metrics and provide independent quality oversight at key project milestones.
• Ensure products meet customer expectations and are fit for purpose before release.

Key Performance Indicators

Firmware/Software PQE Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Escaped Defect Rate: Percentage of defects discovered after release, measuring effectiveness of defect prevention and verification activities.
• Defect Detection Efficiency (DDE): Percentage of defects identified before release versus total defects found.
• Quality Gate Compliance: Percentage of projects passing phase/gate reviews on schedule with no major quality findings.
• Requirements Traceability Coverage: Percentage of requirements traced through design, testing, and validation to release.
• High-Risk Closure Rate: Percentage of critical risks mitigated or closed before project milestones and release.
• Customer-Reported Defects: Number of software/firmware defects reported by customer’s post-release.
• CAPA Effectiveness: Percentage of corrective and preventive actions successfully implemented without recurrence.
• Continuous Improvement Delivery: Number and impact of implemented quality improvements resulting in reduced defects, improved compliance, or increased development efficiency.

Overview of the role

The Firmware/Software Project Quality Engineer is responsible for ensuring software and firmware products are developed, verified, validated, and released in compliance with customer, regulatory, safety, cybersecurity, and quality requirements.

The role provides independent quality governance throughout the development lifecycle, driving risk mitigation, defect prevention, process compliance, root cause analysis, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction.

Core Areas of Responsibility/Accountability

• Lead quality planning and governance throughout the firmware/software development lifecycle.
• Ensure compliance with customer, regulatory, and business requirements.
• Drive risk management, including FMEA, CTQ identification, and mitigation activities.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to embed quality, reliability, and compliance into product development.
• Review and approve key quality deliverables, design documentation, and validation plans.
• Facilitate quality reviews, design reviews, and release readiness assessments.
• Drive root cause analysis, corrective actions, and defect prevention activities.
• Monitor quality metrics and provide project quality reporting and oversight.
• Support audits, supplier quality activities, NPI, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Act as the independent quality representative, ensuring products meet requirements and are delivered right first time.