Operations & Quality Assurance Lead - remote

Excellent opportunity to join a global organisation growing their Australian footprint

Your new company
Join a global defence organisation with a rapidly expanding footprint across Australia a business delivering innovative, highimpact capability across land, air and maritime domains. This is a rare opportunity to join a flagship program at its earliest stage, with major growth ahead and the chance to be part of something significant from the very beginning.
This role offers exceptional visibility, autonomy, and the ability to directly influence supplier performance, quality outcomes and production readiness. With a new Australian manufacturing presence launching later this year, this is truly a watch this space moment and an ideal time to join.
Your new role
The position is parttime initially (60%), with scope to move to fulltime by end of year once manufacturing commences. It is fully remote, and can be performed from anywhere in Australia, with interstate travel required to meet suppliers and subcontractors.
As the Operations & Quality Lead, you will play a critical role in preparing, managing and assuring the performance of the Australian supply base. Youll ensure suppliers are productionready, qualitycompliant, and capable of delivering to defencegrade standards.
This role blends operations management, supplier engagement, production readiness, and handson quality engineering. You will work closely with subcontractors across Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, ensuring manufacturing processes, raw material flow, and quality controls are robust, efficient and fully traceable.
Key responsibilities include:

• Driving supplier production planning, capacity management and process efficiency
• Ensuring raw material flow and stock levels meet production timelines
• Embedding defence, regulatory and contractual quality standards
• Maintaining full traceability across the entire supply chain
• Providing handson quality engineering support across supplier and manufacturing activities
• Developing and implementing control plans, PFMEA and production readiness processes
• Conducting supplier audits, capability assessments and First Article Inspections (FAI)
• Managing deviations, NCRs, corrective actions and continuous improvement initiatives
• Leading root cause analysis and driving repeatable, safe manufacturing outcomes
• Supporting internal/external audits and promoting a culture of quality and safety
• Building strong relationships with suppliers and stakeholders a key success factor in this role

This is a highimpact position where communication, stakeholder engagement and relationship management are absolutely essential.
What you'll need to succeed
You are an experienced operations or quality engineering professional with strong manufacturing and defence exposure. You thrive in environments where autonomy, communication and stakeholder engagement are critical.You will bring:

• Australian Citizenship
• Engineering degree (Mechanical) or relevant trade background
• Strong experience in production/operations management within defence manufacturing
• Strong experience in quality engineering and supplier quality
• Proven capability across machining, welding, painting, coating and assembly processes
• Experience with FAI, PFMEA, control plans and defencegrade quality requirements
• Ability to interpret complex GD&T and analyse inspection data
• Handson experience with NCRs, SCARs, audits and corrective actions
• Working knowledge of ISO 9001, AS9102 and defence compliance frameworks
• Willingness to travel interstate to suppliers as required

Desirable:

• Knowledge of militarygrade coatings
• Welding NDT familiarity
• Configuration control experience
• Lean/CI experience (5S, Kaizen, etc.)

What you need to do now
Dont miss the chance to join a global defence leader at a pivotal moment of growth. Apply now or share your resume directly with Amy.McNulty@hays.com.au#3001970