Sr Manager, Quality & Reliability Engineering

We’re looking for people who put their innovation to work to advance our success – and their own. Join an organization that ensures a more secure world through connecting and protecting our customers with inventive electrical solutions.

The Sr Manager, Design Quality, Reliability & Development Assurance will lead and partner with engineering teams to establish scalable, practical approaches for design quality, verification and validation, reliability engineering, technical reviews, and product development rigor.

This role is responsible for driving consistency in how products are developed, tested, and assessed for readiness while maintaining the speed and agility required in a fast-growing New Product Introduction (NPI) environment.

The successful candidate will combine strong engineering credibility with exceptional influence and change leadership skills. They will build common practices, coach engineering teams, establish engineering standards, and ultimately develop a team that enables predictable product development outcomes across multiple business units. This role is a key member of the Engineering Excellence organization.

WHAT YOU WILL EXPERIENCE IN THIS POSITION:

Design Quality Excellence

• Develop and implement standard engineering practices that improve design quality and development consistency.
• Establish scalable design review methodologies and standard processes.
• Define engineering readiness and technical maturity expectations throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Partner with engineering leaders to improve technical rigor while maintaining development speed.
• Provide independent technical challenge and feedback during development reviews.
• Define expectations for system architecture, multi-functional design reviews, design maturity, issue closure, and required technical evidence.
• Ensure customer requirements, product requirements, critical-to-quality characteristics, and initial risks are translated into clear engineering inputs early in development.

Verification & Validation Excellence

• Establish common verification and validation methodologies across the organization.
• Define expectations for verification strategies, test planning, test evidence, and requirements-to-test traceability.
• Develop scalable approaches for requirements-to-test traceability.
• Partner with engineering teams to improve verification planning early in development.
• Support readiness assessments for major product development milestones.
• Ensure validation confirms that requirements and critical-to-quality characteristics have been met and that results are appropriately documented.
• Establish measures that evaluate verification and validation effectiveness, including coverage, issue discovery, closure, and retest.

Development Assurance & NPI Readiness

• Own the technical assurance framework and evidence expectations for key NPI tollgates and verification checkpoints.
• Define scalable entry and exit criteria for EV, DV, PV, and launch readiness based on product risk and complexity.
• Assess technical maturity, quality and reliability risk, and completeness of required engineering evidence.
• Ensure unresolved technical risks, exceptions, and deviations are clearly documented, owned, time-bound, and visible to decision-makers.
• Partner with Engineering leaders and PMO to integrate quality, reliability, and technical-readiness inputs into NPI stage-gate decisions.
• Support risk-based application of the assurance process to maintain rigor without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Reliability Engineering

• Develop and deploy reliability engineering methodologies appropriate to product risk and complexity.
• Establish frameworks for DFMEA, risk assessment, reliability planning, and reliability growth.
• Drive proactive identification and mitigation of technical risk.
• Partner with engineering teams to integrate reliability considerations earlier in the design process.
• Build and lead reliability engineering capabilities over time.
• Establish reliability targets and measures that connect development evidence to post-launch field performance.
• Build and lead reliability engineering capabilities over time.

Engineering Standards & Continuous Improvement

• Create practical engineering standard work, templates, tools, and guidance materials.
• Identify gaps in current development practices and drive systemic improvements.
• Capture and institutionalize engineering lessons learned across business units.
• Establish metrics and dashboards that measure engineering effectiveness and product readiness.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
• Partner with Sustaining Engineering, Quality, Service, and business engineering teams to identify systemic trends and prioritize corrective actions.
• Establish metrics and dashboards that measure product readiness, open technical risk, validation effectiveness, field performance, and corrective-action effectiveness.

Organizational Leadership

• Build strong partnerships with Engineering, PMO, Quality, Manufacturing, ISC, Product Management, and Commercial teams.
• Influence engineering practices across multiple business units without direct authority.
• Coach, mentor, and develop future engineering excellence and reliability talent.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives that improve product development effectiveness.
• Build and scale the Quality, Reliability and Development Assurance organization as the capability matures.

YOU HAVE:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or other technical field.
• 8+ years of engineering experience supporting NPI or product development environments.
• 3+ years leading engineering teams, technical programs, or engineering process improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience influencing engineering organizations and driving adoption of new practices.
• Experience leading or participating in design reviews, technical reviews, and product development governance.
• Strong understanding of product development lifecycles and engineering standards.
• Ability to balance technical rigor with business speed and practicality.
• Ideally, experience in reliability engineering, systems engineering, verification & validation, or design quality disciplines.
• Experience implementing engineering processes or development frameworks across multiple teams or business units.
• Knowledge of DFMEA, risk management, systems engineering, APQP, Design for Six Sigma, or related methodologies preferred.
• Experience developing engineering standards, design review frameworks, or product development operating models preferred.
• Experience building new capabilities or functions within a growing organization.

WE HAVE:

• A dynamic global reach with diverse operations around the world that will stretch your abilities, provide plentiful career opportunities, and allow you to make an impact every day

  • nVent is a leading global provider of electrical connection and protection solutions. We believe our inventive electrical solutions enable safer systems and ensure a more secure world. We design, manufacture, market, install and service high performance products and solutions that connect and protect some of the world's most sensitive equipment, buildings and critical processes. We offer a comprehensive range of systems protection and electrical connections solutions across industry-leading brands that are recognized globally for quality, reliability and innovation.

  • Our principal office is in London and our management office in the United States is in Minneapolis. Our robust portfolio of leading electrical product brands dates back more than 100 years and includes nVent CADDY, ERICO, HOFFMAN, ILSCO, SCHROFF and TRACHTE. Learn more at www.nvent.com.

• Commitment to strengthen communities where our employees live and work

  • We encourage and support the philanthropic activities of our employees worldwide

  • Through our nVent in Action matching program, we provide funds to nonprofit and educational organizations where our employees volunteer or donate money

• Core values that shape our culture and drive us to deliver the best for our employees and our customers. We’re known for being:

  • Innovative & adaptable

  • Dedicated to absolute integrity

  • Focused on the customer first

  • Respectful and team oriented

  • Optimistic and energizing

  • Accountable for performance

• Benefits to support the lives of our employees

Pay Transparency
 
nVent’s pay scale is based on the expected range of base pay for this job and the employee’s work location. Employee pay within this range will be based on a combination of factors including knowledge, skills, abilities, experience, education, and performance. Where federal, state, or local minimum wage requirements exist, employee pay will comply.
 
Compensation Range:

Depending on the position offered, employee may be eligible for other forms of compensation, such as annual incentives.

Benefit Overview

At nVent, we value our people and their health and well-being.  We provide a broad benefits package with meaningful programs for eligible full-time employees that includes:

• Medical, dental, and vision plans along with flexible spending accounts, short-term and long-term disability benefits, critical illness, accident insurance and life insurance.

• A 401(k) retirement plan and an employee stock purchase plan — both include a company match.

• Other supplemental benefits may include tuition reimbursement, caregiver, personal and parental leave, back-up care services, paid time off including volunteer time, a well-being program, and/or legal & identity theft protection.

At nVent, we connect and protect our customers with inventive electrical solutions. People are our most valuable asset. Inclusion and diversity means that we celebrate and encourage each other’s authenticity because we understand that uniqueness sparks growth.