Supplier Quality Engineer

Welcome to the intersection of energy and home services. At NRG, we’re driven by our passion to create a smarter, cleaner and more connected future.

Vivint Smart Home, an NRG owned company, is a leading smart home company in the United States, dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services. We find purpose in proactively protecting and keeping our customers connected to home, no matter where they are. Join the Smart Home team to create smarter, safer and more sustainable homes.

Summary:

In this role you will be responsible for supporting sustaining engineering work in supply chain for in production products and transitional support for new products. At Vivint, this role centers on three core areas: partnering with the RQA (Return/Repair Quality Assurance) warehouse on returned-unit inspection and disposition, supporting New Product Introduction (NPI) programs, and managing supplier quality performance. Your technical ability, problem solving skills, and communication skills are key to troubleshoot, diagnose and drive issue resolution and prevention with suppliers.

Primary Responsibilities:

RQA (Return/Repair Quality Assurance) Warehouse Activities:

• Partner with the RQA warehouse team to inspect, test, and disposition returned (RMA'd) field units, confirming whether failures are supplier-attributable.
• Review return and defect rate data by SKU and supplier to identify trends, prioritize investigations, and open supplier corrective actions.
• Define and maintain inspection criteria, sampling plans, and failure-coding standards used by the RQA warehouse team so returned-unit data is consistent and actionable.
• Coordinate the flow of confirmed-defective units and failure evidence between the RQA warehouse, engineering, and suppliers to support 8D root cause investigations and warranty/supplier recovery.
• Monitor RQA warehouse throughput and backlog, partnering with warehouse operations to resolve bottlenecks that delay defect turnaround and corrective action timelines.
• Facilitate communication of customer concerns, issues, and trends to all functions including suppliers.

New Product Introduction (NPI) Support:

• Represent Supplier Quality on NPI programs, ensuring supplier readiness, part qualification, and PPAP approval prior to launch and mass production.
• Partner with product engineering and sourcing during NPI phases to flag supplier quality risks early and drive design-for-manufacturability improvements.
• Lead or support first article inspections, pilot builds, and early field failure analysis for new products, feeding lessons learned back into supplier control plans.
• Establish quality gates and exit criteria that suppliers must meet at each NPI milestone before a product transitions to sustaining production.

Supplier Management:

• Own supplier quality performance for an assigned supplier base, including scorecards and SKU-level defect rate trending.
• Conduct supplier audits of quality systems, processes, and corrective action effectiveness, driving suppliers toward measurable and sustained improvement.
• Drive supplier root cause analysis and corrective actions (8D) and validate results ensuring proper closed-loop corrective action process.
• Manage sub-tier supplier quality requirements and flow-down of specifications to maintain visibility into multi-tier supply chain risk.
• Lead supplier business reviews (SBRs), presenting defect trends, RQA warehouse findings, and NPI performance to align suppliers on improvement priorities.
• Serve as the primary quality point of contact for assigned suppliers, negotiating corrective action timelines and escalating unresolved quality issues.
• Support product engineering by ensuring supplier parts meet engineering requirements.

Required Skills and Education: 

• Bachelor of Science degree in engineering or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of demonstrated successes improving quality in high-volume electronic manufacturing environments.
• Knowledge of quality management systems (ISO) and ISO Auditor training/certification is preferred.
• Experience with test and measurement tools.
• Has a flexible approach to change, can work effectively in a variety of situations, constantly seeks improvement and is forward looking.
• Ability to travel both domestically and overseas.
• Demonstrate passion to succeed, inspire and motivate the team.
• Strong negotiation skills as well as ability to facilitate informed and timely decisions and mediating tradeoffs with various groups to deliver a product on time and ready for market.
• Deliver clear, concise professional verbal and written communication that is appropriate to the situation and audience. Including commitment to transparency, and stakeholder-based communication.
• Exceptional collaboration, listening, written and verbal communication skills, including an ability to clearly communicate with both business and technical audiences.
• Encourage participation & decision-making by all team members and effectively manage group dynamics.

NRG Energy is committed to a drug and alcohol-free workplace. To the extent permitted by law and any applicable collective bargaining agreement, employees are subject to periodic random drug testing, and post-accident and reasonable suspicion drug and alcohol testing. EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability. Level, Title and/or Salary may be adjusted based on the applicant's experience or skills.

Official description on file with Talent.

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