Head of Quality

Job description

**Help Build Europe's Hypersonic Capability** At **Hypersonica**, we’re redefining what’s possible in European defence technology. We exist to deliver speed, resilience, and technological independence at a pace that sets a new standard. We are a small, elite team working on problems that matter, and solving them fast. By joining **Hypersonica**, you’re not stepping into a predefined role. You’re joining a talent dense environment where every individual shapes the direction of the company. Our philosophy is to hire a small number of exceptional people with broad, deep technical capability, strong judgement, and the ability to operate autonomously. We hire for talent, not rigid boxes. This role represents a business need, but the way it evolves will be shaped by the individual. If you’ve achieved what others said was impossible, or you bring a unique combination of skills that doesn’t fit a traditional mould, we want to hear from you. The work you do here directly contributes to Europe’s technological independence. ### What you'll do - Build and lead Hypersonica’s UK quality function across design, supply chain, manufacturing, assembly, test, and production. - Design and implement a lean, scalable Quality Management System from zero, aligned to AS9100 and relevant defence quality requirements. - Own the pathway to AS9100 certification, including gap assessment, process architecture, documentation, internal audits, management reviews, corrective actions, and certification readiness. - Define the minimum credible quality controls required for prototype, development, qualification, and production hardware, increasing rigour as the programme matures. - Embed quality into engineering and operations from the outset, ensuring requirements, design decisions, change control, verification evidence, and build records remain clear and traceable. - Own nonconformance, MRB, concessions, deviations, CAPA, and root-cause processes, ensuring issues are contained quickly and permanently resolved. - Build the supplier quality operating model, including supplier selection, qualification, quality agreements, audits, first article inspection, incoming inspection, performance management, and corrective action. - Establish product and process quality controls across manufacturing and assembly, including inspection plans, critical characteristics, special processes, calibration, measurement systems, and configuration traceability. - Define and lead quality readiness gates across design reviews, production readiness reviews, first article inspection, test readiness, and flight readiness. - Act as the senior quality authority during high-consequence decisions, balancing programme speed with evidence, traceability, and product integrity. - Build audit-ready systems by default, ensuring evidence exists because it supports delivery rather than because someone may ask for it later. - Lead engagement with customers, certification bodies, auditors, suppliers, and defence stakeholders on quality matters. - Create concise quality metrics that leadership actually uses, including NCR cycle time, escape rate, supplier quality, first-pass yield, audit findings, CAPA closure, and recurring defect trends. - Build and lead the future UK quality team, defining the required capabilities across design quality, supplier quality, manufacturing quality, and quality systems. - Establish a culture where quality is owned by everyone and the quality function enables engineering rather than policing it. ### Who you are - A senior quality leader with substantial experience in aerospace, defence, complex hardware, or another high-consequence engineering environment. - Proven at building or fundamentally reshaping a Quality Management System, ideally through AS9100 implementation or certification. - Experienced across the full product lifecycle, from requirements and design through supplier manufacture, assembly, test, qualification, and production. - Deeply familiar with AS9100 and practical aerospace or defence quality expectations, including configuration control, traceability, nonconformance, CAPA, FAI, supplier quality, and audit readiness. - Comfortable operating across design quality, supplier quality, and manufacturing quality rather than being confined to one narrow area. - Proven at handling serious quality escapes, leading containment and root-cause analysis, and driving corrective actions to permanent closure. - Credible with senior engineers, programme leaders, manufacturing teams, suppliers, customers, and auditors. - Able to distinguish between controls that protect product integrity and process that exists only because it has always existed. - Strong at building simple, usable systems that teams follow under pressure. - Experienced qualifying and managing suppliers producing flight-critical, safety-critical, or tightly controlled hardware. - Comfortable making hard calls when schedule pressure conflicts with evidence, traceability, or product conformity. - Hands-on by default. You are prepared to be on the shop floor, in design reviews, at supplier sites, and inside investigations when the programme needs it. - Calm, decisive, and commercially aware, with the judgement to keep hardware moving without normalising risk. - Experience with AQAP, MoD quality requirements, composite manufacturing, special processes, or missile systems is highly valuable but not essential. - Experience working with hazardous materials, explosives, energetic materials, or other major-hazard environments would be an advantage, but is not essential. - Motivated by building a quality function from zero where the standard directly determines whether hardware is accepted, tested, and flown. ### Security and eligibility requirement - Due to the nature of the work with the UK MoD, applicants must be a British Citizen, or a dual national holding British citizenship, and eligible for UK Security Clearance and, where required, Developed Vetting. ### What we offer - A mission driven environment with the opportunity to work on one of Europe’s most consequential defence challenges, with direct impact on sovereign capability and security. - Daily collaboration with top experts across engineering, operations, and defence, with real opportunity to learn from the best, contribute, and grow. - High ownership and autonomy; no time tracking, no micromanagement, just clear objectives and accountability for outcomes. - A fast paced environment where good ideas are implemented quickly, and feedback from test and flight drives real decisions. - A culture that values clarity, integrity, and excellence, and supports people who take initiative and push boundaries responsibly. - Competitive compensation and real share options aligned to responsibility and impact, not tenure or hierarchy.