Principal Quality Engineer

Seeking a Principal Quality Engineer with nuclear quality assurance experience for a direct hire opportunity with our client in Hawthorne CA.

This position offers full benefits including PTO Medical Dental and 401k!

Salary is between $150K - $200K per year (based on experience)

This is not a traditional quality role. It is a founding leadership position for someone who will operate as the Quality Leads right handexecuting tactically today while architecting the Quality organization and systems of tomorrows highly vertically integrated enterpriseand converting to a people leader when the time is right. The company operates in a fast-moving R&D environment with rapidly evolving designs and ambitious schedules. The Quality program is designed to be fit-for-purpose and risk-informed ensuring appropriate rigor and compliance while enabling rapid learning and iteration as the technology the first 612 months youll independently own and close critical quality problems become a sought-out partner to engineering teams put early-stage quality controls in place that regulators customers and leadership can trust define a clear roadmap from todays pragmatic controls to a future world-class Quality Management System and begin shaping the structure tooling and cultural norms of the future Quality organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as a solutions owner for quality-related challenges across R&D and early commercial activities embedding directly with teams to understand real constraints and enable compliant execution at speed.
• Develop creative defensible approaches to demonstrating compliance without unnecessary drag.
• Co-architect the companys Quality Management System from the ground up defining near-term quality fundamentals and a roadmap for scaling rigor as the company transitions from R&D to commercial execution.
• Build prevention-focused systems that scale cleanly rather than inspection-heavy controls that calcify.
• Apply nuclear quality assurance principles with judgment distinguishing between regulatory intent and historical habit.
• Serve as a credible technical interface with regulators auditors and external stakeholders.
• Leverage modern tools data automation and AI responsibly to increase speed and rigor simultaneously treating quality as an information system as much as a compliance system.
• Operate as a servant leader anchoring every decision in the companys mission investing in the team and ensuring quality serves as an enabler of safe execution.
• Mentor others and help lay the foundation for a future Quality organization as the company scales.

You Will Be Successful in This Role If

• You operate effectively in ambiguity and make defensible context-aware decisions grounded in safety technical rigor and regulatory intent.
• You build credibility with engineers operators and leadership becoming a partner rather than a gatekeeper.
• You think in systems anticipating second- and third-order effects rather than optimizing locally.
• You distinguish regulatory intent from historical habit and apply nuclear quality assurance principles with judgment not reflex.
• You earn trust across disciplines through transparency competence and follow-through.
• Youre comfortable leading without authority and accepting authority later without ego.
• You use modern tools including AI to compress cycle time without sacrificing rigor and you believe technology should augment human judgment rather than replace accountability.
• Youre deeply aligned with the companys mission and make decisions through the lens of long-term impact rather than local optimization.

Basic Qualifications

• Prior experience in nuclear quality assurance (R&D commercial or both) sufficient to innovate responsibly.
• Broad quality engineering background spanning design manufacturing suppliers and testing.
• Experience building or significantly reshaping quality systems not just operating mature ones.
• Demonstrated ability to execute with minimal direction in incomplete systems.
• Strong pattern recognition and judgment under pressure.
• Comfort working in high-intensity rapidly changing environments.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience interfacing directly with regulators auditors or external stakeholders in a nuclear or other safety-critical industry.
• Experience leading or mentoring quality teams through periods of organizational growth.
• Background applying modern tools automation or AI to quality systems and workflows.
• Exposure to advanced reactor fuel fabrication or other first-of-a-kind nuclear programs.

If you are interested in learning more about this role please submit your resume for immediate consideration!

INDH