Quality / Product Assurance Lead

PAVE Space is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving over 4-tonne payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours. Real hardware, real funding, real milestones, and the first parts flying soon. That's the programme. You're the discipline behind every part of it that has to be defensible.The quality function has been carried as a side job by the engineers building the hardware. That works at twenty people, breaks at sixty, and PAVE Space is past forty. The first customer audit is coming, the first insurer questions are landing, and the qualification campaigns need a real Product Assurance owner. You'll formalise it, on a timeline measured in weeks, not quarters.You will ownThe Product Assurance programme for Space, Launch and Ground segments; qualification, acceptance, flight pedigreeThe Quality Management System: processes, framework, and the path to potential certificationsNon-conformance handling, root cause and corrective actions at flight-hardware levelInsurer interface; the documentation, qualification evidence, and discipline that earns coverage on real termsConfiguration management and traceability: what part, what batch, what build, what testWhat we are looking for8+ years of product assurance or quality leadership on space, aerospace, or other high-reliability hardware programmesDirect experience standing up certifications, not inheriting a mature oneTrack record managing institutional or commercial customer audits and qualification reviewsSupplier quality experience at vehicle scale, including incoming inspection on critical hardwareHands-on with non-conformance and root-cause discipline at flight-hardware levelComfortable being the PA voice in a design review when the schedule says ship and the data says waitECSS, NASA, or AS9100 working knowledge and the judgement to know when to depart from themEnglish, fluently; French strongly preferredExperience certifying a small organisation to AS9100Experience with insurer or underwriter conversations on flight hardwareQuality on propulsion or pressurised systemsExperience standing up PA as a function rather than inheriting an established one.You will fit ifYou'd rather write the NCR yourself than wait for someone else's draft.You see the QMS as a tool people actually use, not a binder on a shelf.You can disagree with a PM on a shipping decision and still be on the same side of the engineering problem the next morning.You know "tailored from ECSS" is the answer to most questions, not "by-the-book ECSS."You take pride in the audit that goes smoothly because the artefacts were already there.Fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD), with our test site in Chavalon twenty minutes away. There's no QMS to inherit, no audit binder on the shelf, no PA team underneath you. You'd be the one building it, while the first customers start asking to see it.We are building to ship, grounded on real hardware, real funding, real milestones. #J-18808-Ljbffr