What Is a Quality Manager? Job Descriptions, Salaries, and Skills Required to Become One

Businesses across every industry are always striving to achieve their best. Their best products or their best services help build a loyal consumer base, paired with the best processes and procedures to do so effectively and efficiently. 

Quality management is a key tool for achieving your brand’s best before going to market. Through a continuous process of controlling, monitoring, and improving quality, businesses can ensure consistent excellence in their products and services.

An Overview of the Quality Manager

When operating within a competitive global marketplace, it’s more important than ever for businesses to deliver high-quality products and services that continue to grow the customer base, which is why so many are investing in a quality management program for their organization. 

Leading the charge, a quality manager is essential in helping organizations achieve continued success in their respective industries. Always striving for continuous improvement and excellence, quality managers work diligently to improve internal and external processes, practices, and products to provide consumers with the best value possible. 

For a quality manager, their work is never complete. By implementing a variety of quality improvement methods, including Lean Six Sigma, ISO, the Toyota Production System, and many more, quality managers repeatedly work toward a primary goal of product and process improvement.

Quality Manager Responsibilities

The responsibilities in this role will vary based on the industry, size of business, and internal company requirements. Typical duties include:

• Reviewing customer feedback and understanding customer demands and expectations of products and services
• Managing waste in production and improving efficiency within production processes
• Creating production plans for new products with a focus on quality
• Assessing the quality of a product or services through a variety of stress tests
• Working with management teams to provide recommendations and solutions to quality issues
• Reporting on the quality of products and/or services throughout all phases of production
• Assessing and reviewing all materials provided by suppliers to ensure overall quality
• Investigating root causes of defects and recommending solutions for quality issues
• Onboarding and training new quality control team members
• Staying up to date with new quality control techniques and methods

Quality Manager Salary

Quality managers play an important role in the overall success of their company and are compensated accordingly. The average quality manager salary in the United States is $83,255. Along with salary, quality managers are often additionally compensated through company profit sharing programs and benefits such as drug insurance, 401(k) matching, health insurance and disability insurance.

Quality Manager Jobs

Enticed by the lucrative quality manager salary? Applicants who are looking to start their career in quality management can find jobs on online job boards such as Indeed.com, Zip Recruiter, and Simply Hired, or use professional social networking sites such as LinkedIn to connect with hiring managers. 

To give you an idea of the breadth of quality manager jobs available at any given time, here are 10 new positions currently available across the United States:

1. Quality Assurance Manager – US Department of the Navy

Working within the Technical Support Division, Engineering and Planning Department, the U.S. Department of the Navy is hiring a quality assurance manager to monitor and control all products and services.

2. Quality Management Project Manager – CVS Health

CVS Health is hiring two quality management project managers for a work from home position with a background in quality or dental.

3. Quality Assurance Manager – Shenker, Inc.

Assist U.S. branches in achieving their GDP certification, maintaining their certification, and working towards continuous GDP process improvements across all U.S. branches. Click here to view the full job description.

4. Vaccine Quality Assurance Project Manager: COVID-19 Vaccine – AM LLC.

AM Trace is hiring a full-time quality assurance manager to assist their Orange County COVID-19 immunization programs.

5. Quality Control Manager – Morris Inc.

Working with the FHWA construction project(s), Morris Inc. is looking for a quality control manager to ensure all phases of construction meet quality control objectives.

6. Quality Assurance Manager – Rubicon Gear

Rubicon Gear is hiring a quality assurance manager responsible for maintaining quality standards in all systems, processes, and procedures.

7. Senior Manager, Quality – West Pharmaceutical Services

West Pharmaceutical is hiring a senior quality manager to ensure all plant processes and products meet industry standards, to achieve high quality products.

8. Quality Manager – Liberty Personnel Services, Inc.

Liberty Personnel has an opening for a quality manager with several years of experience working in an FDA-regulated packaging environment.

9. Senior Quality Assurance Manager – Amazon

Amazon is hiring a quality assurance manager to create second-to-none automation for regression and feature testing, as well as develop and implement a high-level test strategy.

10. Senior quality manager – Apex Systems

Apex Systems is looking for a senior quality manager to develop and implement quality programs to improve their quality and customer processes.

Top Industries With a Demand for Quality Managers

With a focus on maintaining a high level of excellence, it’s no surprise that organizations from a wide variety of industries depend on quality managers to develop top-notch products and services within their operations.

Some of the top industries that hire quality managers include:

• Manufacturing
• Healthcare and Pharmaceutical
• Food and Beverage
• Financial Institutions
• Government Departments 
• Legal Organizations

Train to Become a Quality Manager Today

Become a quality expert with Simplilearn’s Lean Six Sigma Expert, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification Training, Post Graduate Program in Lean Six Sigma, provided in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This Lean Six Sigma certification program helps you gain critical skills to lead operational excellence in transformational projects by improving quality and end results.

This course focuses on two important management methodologies – Lean practices and Six Sigma – that can accelerate business improvement.