The Sub-Platform Quality Manager serves as a partner to Operations, Engineering, Product Development, Supply Chain, Procurement, Sales, and Executive Leadership. The role requires strong technical depth in semiconductor quality combined with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries, establish accountability, and translate quality performance into business results.
As a Sub-Platform Quality Manager, you will have the opportunity to tap into your curiosity and collaborate with some of the most innovative people around the world. Here, you will make an impact by:
1. Enterprise Quality Strategy & Leadership
Develop and execute the company's global quality strategy in alignment with business objectives, technology roadmaps, and customer expectations.
Establish quality objectives, policies, standards, and performance targets across multiple product centers and manufacturing locations.
Provide executive-level visibility into quality risks, performance, trends, and improvement priorities.
Establish a consistent quality operating model across sites while allowing appropriate flexibility for local requirements.
Drive a culture of quality ownership, prevention, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Serve as the senior quality voice in strategic business, product, manufacturing, and customer decisions.
Partner with executive leadership to identify and mitigate quality risks that could affect revenue, product launches, customer relationships, or business continuity.
2. New Product Introduction (NPI) & Product Quality
Establish quality strategy and requirements from product concept through commercialization and production ramp.
Provide quality leadership for NPI, including design reviews, risk assessments, qualification, validation, and production readiness.
Ensure robust implementation of APQP or equivalent product-quality planning processes where applicable.
Establish requirements for DFMEA, PFMEA, Control Plans, MSA, SPC, capability analysis, and other preventive quality methodologies.
Ensure product and process risks are identified, quantified, mitigated, and formally accepted before production release.
Partner with R&D and Product Engineering to establish reliability and qualification strategies for new semiconductor products.
Define quality gates and launch criteria for new products and manufacturing processes.
Establish mechanisms to capture lessons learned and incorporate them into future product and process development.
Provide executive escalation and decision support for significant launch-quality risks.
3. Multi-Site Manufacturing Quality
Provide strategic quality leadership across multiple manufacturing facilities, internal operations, and outsourced manufacturing partners.
Establish common quality standards, metrics, processes, and governance across sites.
Drive consistency in manufacturing quality, process capability, yield, inspection, testing, and defect-management practices.
Establish site-level quality objectives and hold leadership teams accountable for performance.
Monitor manufacturing quality trends and identify systemic issues that require enterprise-level action.
Lead cross-site initiatives to improve yield, reduce variation, eliminate recurring defects, and lower Cost of Poor Quality.
Establish escalation mechanisms for critical manufacturing and product-quality issues.
Promote replication of successful quality practices across manufacturing locations.
4. Supplier Quality Management
Establish the strategic supplier quality program for critical semiconductor materials, components, wafers, assembly, packaging, testing, and other external processes.
Define supplier qualification, development, monitoring, and escalation strategies based on product and process risk.
Establish supplier quality KPIs and performance expectations.
Lead executive-level engagement with strategic suppliers when significant quality or reliability issues arise.
Ensure effective supplier corrective action, containment, root-cause analysis, and preventive action.
Partner with Procurement and Supply Chain to incorporate quality, reliability, and risk into supplier selection and sourcing decisions.
Develop risk-based supplier audit and surveillance programs.
Establish mechanisms to identify systemic supplier risks before they affect production or customers.
Drive supplier capability improvement and long-term defect prevention.
5. Customer Quality & Strategic Customer Relationships
Serve as the senior quality escalation point for key customers and strategic accounts.
Establish customer-quality strategies aligned with customer-specific requirements and business priorities.
Lead resolution of major customer complaints, quality incidents, product returns, and field issues.
Ensure timely and technically rigorous 8D, root-cause, containment, corrective-action, and effectiveness-verification processes.
Establish executive-level communication protocols for significant customer quality events.
Support customer audits, quality reviews, product qualifications, and supplier assessments.
Partner with Sales and Account Management to understand customer quality expectations and emerging risks.
Monitor customer quality trends and convert feedback into systemic product and process improvements.
Build customer confidence through transparent communication, robust corrective action, and demonstrated prevention.
6. Reliability Engineering & Product Qualification
Establish the company's semiconductor product reliability strategy in partnership with Engineering and Product Development.
Define reliability qualification requirements, methodologies, and acceptance criteria based on product technology and application.
Oversee reliability qualification, life testing, accelerated testing, failure analysis, and field-performance monitoring.
Ensure appropriate reliability modeling and risk assessment are incorporated into product development.
Establish processes for managing reliability excursions and field failures.
Partner with Design, Process, Packaging, Test, and Failure Analysis organizations to identify and eliminate reliability risks.
Monitor field-return and reliability data to identify emerging trends.
Ensure lessons from reliability failures are incorporated into product design and manufacturing controls.
Maintain awareness of applicable industry standards and customer-specific reliability requirements.
7. Quality Management System & Governance
Own the strategic direction and effectiveness of the global Quality Management System.
Establish QMS governance across multiple manufacturing sites and organizational functions.
Ensure compliance with applicable quality standards, customer requirements, regulatory requirements, and industry expectations.
Lead management-review processes and establish executive visibility into QMS performance.
Establish a risk-based internal audit strategy.
Oversee corrective and preventive action systems and ensure systemic effectiveness rather than administrative closure.
Drive standardization of quality processes, documentation, records, and controls across sites.
Identify opportunities to simplify and strengthen the QMS while maintaining appropriate control.
Ensure quality-system changes support business growth, new technologies, acquisitions, and manufacturing expansion.
8. Quality Risk Management
Establish an enterprise-wide framework for identifying, assessing, mitigating, and monitoring product and process quality risks.
Ensure quality risks are incorporated into business continuity, product development, supplier management, and manufacturing decisions.
Establish escalation criteria for critical product, supplier, manufacturing, and customer risks.
Provide executive leadership with clear assessments of quality risk, business impact, and mitigation status.
Lead cross-functional risk reviews for critical products, processes, suppliers, and manufacturing sites.
Ensure high-risk issues receive appropriate resources and executive attention.
9. Continuous Improvement & Operational Excellence
Establish a company-wide quality improvement roadmap focused on defect prevention and business impact.
Drive Six Sigma, Lean, statistical process control, and structured problem-solving methodologies.
Identify opportunities for automation, data analytics, predictive quality, and advanced process monitoring.
Ensure improvement projects have measurable financial and quality outcomes.
Promote replication of successful improvement programs across sites.
10. Quality Data, Analytics & Digital Transformation
Establish a global quality-data strategy that enables timely, fact-based decision making.
Develop standardized quality dashboards and executive KPIs across manufacturing sites.
Integrate customer, supplier, manufacturing, reliability, and field-quality data to identify systemic trends.
Promote advanced statistical analysis and predictive quality methodologies.
Leverage digital quality systems, automated reporting, analytics, and data visualization to improve responsiveness.
Establish data governance and consistent definitions for enterprise quality metrics.
Your Skills and Expertise
To set you up for success in this role from day one, 3M requires (at a minimum) the following qualifications:
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Quality, Materials Science, Manufacturing, or a related technical field.
Five (5) years of progressive quality, engineering, manufacturing, or reliability experience in private, public, government or military environment
Two (2) years of experience in semiconductor, microelectronics, electronics or advanced manufacturing in private, public, government or military environment
One (1) year of experience in Quality Leadership or Management role in private, public, government or military environment preferably with multi-site or global responsibility.
Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:
Master's degree in engineering, Quality, Business, or a related discipline.
One (1) year of experience in Quality Leadership or Management role preferably with multi-site or global responsibility.in private, public, government or military environment
ASQ CQE, CMQ/OE, or equivalent professional certification.
Demonstrated experience leading NPI/product quality programs.
Strong experience with supplier quality and/or customer quality management.
Strong understanding of semiconductor manufacturing, assembly, packaging, testing, or related processes.
Demonstrated experience with reliability engineering and product qualification.
Strong knowledge of Quality Management Systems, audits, corrective action, risk management, and continuous improvement.
Demonstrated ability to lead complex cross-functional and multi-site initiatives.
Strong analytical, financial, communication, and executive presentation skills.
Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent.
Experience with ISO 9001, IATF 16949, AS9100, or other relevant quality systems.
Knowledge of applicable semiconductor standards such as JEDEC and AEC-Q100/AEC-Q200, where relevant to the business.
Experience with wafer foundries, semiconductor packaging, test operations, or complex electronics supply chains.
Experience leading global quality organizations.
Experience implementing enterprise quality-management systems or digital quality transformation.
Work Location: This role follows an on-site working model, requiring the employee to work at least four days a week at the 3M center in Maplewood, MN or at the 3M Center in Austin, TX.
Travel: May include up to 25% domestic and/or international
Relocation: May be authorized
Must be legally authorized to work in country of employment without sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H1B status).
Responsibilities of this position may include direct and/or indirect physical or logical access to information, systems, technologies subjected to the regulations/compliance with U.S. Export Control Laws.
U.S. Export Control laws and U.S. Government Department of Defense contracts and sub-contracts impose certain restrictions on companies and their ability to share export-controlled and other technology and services with certain "non-U.S. persons" (persons who are not U.S. citizens or nationals, lawful permanent residents of the U.S., refugees, "Temporary Residents" (granted Amnesty or Special Agricultural Worker provisions), or persons granted asylum.
To comply with these laws, 3M must help assess candidates' U.S. person status.
The questions asked in this application are intended to assess this and will be used for evaluation purposes only. Failure to provide the necessary information in this regard will result in our inability to consider you further for this particular position.
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Applicable to US Applicants Only:The expected compensation range for this position is $164,612 - $201,193, which includes base pay plus variable incentive pay, if eligible. This range represents a good faith estimate for this position. The specific compensation offered to a candidate may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant knowledge, training, skills, work location, and/or experience. In addition, this position may be eligible for a range of benefits (e.g., Medical, Dental & Vision, Health Savings Accounts, Health Care & Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, Disability Benefits, Life Insurance, Voluntary Benefits, Paid Absences and Retirement Benefits, etc.). Additional information is available at: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/careers-us/working-at-3m/benefits/.
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