APQP Program Manager - Product Quality Assurance Engineering
Location: Madrid, Spain; Milan, Lombardy, Italy; Krakow, Lesser Poland, Poland; Vaesteras, Vastmanland County, Sweden
Company Name: HITACHI ENERGY SPAIN, S.A.U.
Job Schedule: Full time
Remote: No
The Opportunity
Are you passionate about quality assurance, reliability and eager to make a significant impact in a global program?
Join Hitachi Energy in a high-impact role where you will lead the deployment of Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) across global teams and key sites. As the APQP Program Manager – Product Quality Engineering, you will take a holistic approach to quality, driving consistency, risk mitigation, and continuous improvement throughout the New Product Introduction (NPI) lifecycle. This is a unique opportunity to shape quality strategies, collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, and ensure excellence from concept to delivery, with a hands-on opportunity to pilot in strategic products under development.
How you'll make an impact
- Lead APQP Deployment: Act as the global lead for APQP project management, ensuring consistent execution across functions and sites, implementing QMS adaptation and scalability to processes, including gate models, to embed APQP compliance to all product lines.
- Multi-Site Coordination: Oversee and align APQP and quality assurance efforts across multiple locations, embedding best practices and harmonized standards, leading selected pilots under the gate model execution.
- Process Integration & Governance: Integrate quality processes with an end-to-end holistic view across our business management system, with strong cross-functional collaboration and effective change management.
- Training & Culture Building: Lead training programs to foster a zero-defect mindset and ensure adoption of APQP principles across all lifecycle phases, from product development lifecycle, toward project engineering, execution and service.
- Risk Management & Quality Planning: Identify and mitigate product quality risks using DFMEA/PFMEA, Control Plans, Lessons Learned and Measurement System Analysis, with a robust program management integrated quality plan.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with suppliers, internal and external customers, to ensure quality expectations are met or exceeded.
- Audits & Compliance: Lead quality audits, support gate reviews, and ensure adherence to regulatory and customer requirements.
- Continuous Improvement: Apply Lean Six Sigma, quality tools, and structured problem-solving tools to drive long-term quality improvements in collaboration with all product value chain.
- Living Hitachi Energy’s core values safety and integrity, which means taking responsibility for your own actions while caring for your colleagues and the business.
Our employee benefit programs are tailored to each country depending on location of employment and job grade. Please contact your talent acquisition partner for more specific information on the employee benefit program offering in your intended country of employment more information will be available during the recruitment process.
Your background
- Degree in Engineering (Electrical, Mechanical, or related field), Quality Management, or equivalent.
- 10+ years of experience in product development or program management within a manufacturing or industrial environment utilizing APQP.
- Proven experience with APQP tools (PPAP, FMEA, Control Plans, MSA, Process Capability, etc.) and quality systems across multiple sites.
- Strong understanding of NPI processes, product lifecycle, regulatory standards (ISO, APQP4Wind), and quality assurance methodologies.
- Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or equivalent experience preferred.
- Ability to read and interpret engineering drawings and manufacturing documentation.
- Excellent communication, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Strong skills in change management, relationship-building and business acumen.
- Analytical skills and a strategic mindset for quality assurance and reliability planning.
- Collaborative team-player, committed to fostering a positive and productive work environment.
- Proficiency in both spoken & written English language is required. Additional languages are considered a plus.
