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, high‑impact capability across land, air and maritime domains.

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 part‑time initially (60%), with the intention to transition to full‑time by end of year once manufacturing ramps up. The role can be worked remote, with travel required across Victoria and Brisbane to meet suppliers and subcontractors.

As the Quality Lead, you will play a critical role in preparing, managing and assuring the performance of the Australian supply base. You'll ensure suppliers are production‑ready, quality‑compliant, and capable of delivering to defence‑grade standards.

This role offers the prospect to progress into operations management, supplier engagement, production readiness, and hands‑on 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 hands‑on 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 high‑impact position where communication, stakeholder engagement and relationship management are absolutely essential.

What you'll need to succeed

You are an experienced 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
- Experience in defence manufacturing
- Engineering degree (Mechanical) or relevant trade background
- 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 defence‑grade quality requirements
- Ability to interpret complex GD&T; and analyse inspection data
- Hands‑on 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 military‑grade coatings
- Welding NDT familiarity
- Configuration control experience
- Lean/CI experience (5S, Kaizen, etc.)

What you need to do now

Don't miss the chance to join a global defence leader at a pivotal moment of growth. Apply now or share your resume directly with email_hidden

📌 Quality Assurance - remote with travel (Melbourne)
🏢 Hays Recruitment
📍 Melbourne