Job Description
The Opportunity:
Mattel is currently seeking a Manager, Quality Engineering. This role is a member of the corporate Quality Engineering team and is responsible for leading a team of Quality Engineers supporting Mattel Global Brand Teams and product development programs. The Manager will work directly with Marketing, Design, Product Development, other R&D support teams, Quality Data Analytics, Product Safety and Regulatory Compliance, laboratories, and global Manufacturing and Quality teams.
The Manager, Quality Engineering will provide both people and technical leadership to ensure quality, safety, regulatory compliance, reliability, and consumer expectations are effectively integrated throughout the product development lifecycle. The Manager will shape and execute quality strategies within assigned brands, product categories, or areas of responsibility while developing engineering talent and driving consistent execution of Quality Engineering practices.
The Manager will have responsibility for team performance, talent development, resource planning, technical execution, and quality outcomes within their assigned scope. This role requires strong technical judgment and the ability to influence cross-functional decisions while building a high-performing Quality Engineering team.
What Your Impact Will Be:
Strategy Development & Execution
- Shapes and executes Quality Engineering strategies within assigned brands, product categories, or functional areas to support business objectives and consumer expectations.
- Ensures consistent execution of product quality, safety, risk management, reliability, and regulatory requirements throughout the product development lifecycle.
- Maintains a strong understanding of applicable global toy and consumer product regulations, standards, and industry best practices and ensures requirements are effectively understood and implemented by the team.
- Maintains awareness of new and evolving regulatory requirements, standards, technologies, and industry practices and supports implementation of applicable changes within the organization.
- Identifies systemic product and process risks within assigned areas and develops strategies with appropriate cross-functional partners to mitigate those risks.
- Contributes Quality Engineering expertise and lessons learned to the development and improvement of broader organizational practices and processes.
Leadership & Team Development
- Leads, coaches, and develops a team of Quality Engineers, building capability in quality systems, regulatory requirements, technical problem-solving, risk management, data analysis, and decision-making.
- Establishes clear goals, priorities, expectations, and accountability for the team and ensures alignment with Quality Engineering and business objectives.
- Provides ongoing coaching, feedback, performance management, and career development for team members.
- Develops technical and leadership capability within the team through mentoring, stretch assignments, knowledge sharing, and development planning.
- Assesses team capability and resource needs and appropriately allocates engineering resources based on product complexity, risk, workload, and business priorities.
- Supports hiring, onboarding, development, succession planning, and retention of Quality Engineering talent.
- Creates an environment that encourages technical curiosity, collaboration, accountability, continuous learning, and appropriate escalation of product quality and safety concerns.
Cross-Functional Influence
- Builds strong partnerships with Marketing, Design, Product Development, Product Safety, Regulatory Compliance, Quality Data Analytics, Play Labs, Manufacturing, laboratories, and other cross-functional organizations.
- Ensures Quality Engineering is appropriately engaged throughout product development to influence decisions affecting product quality, safety, compliance, reliability, and consumer satisfaction.
- Anticipates downstream impacts, opportunities, and risks and ensures appropriate cross-functional engagement and communication for effective resolution.
- Influences cross-functional teams and leaders to make balanced, risk-based decisions while maintaining consumer safety and regulatory compliance as fundamental requirements.
- Provides Quality Engineering leadership during significant product quality, safety, compliance, manufacturing, and post-market issues.
- Establishes effective communication and escalation practices within the team to ensure significant risks are appropriately communicated to Quality Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Decision-Making & Data Strategy
- Promotes objective, data-driven decision-making throughout the Quality Engineering team.
- Ensures engineers identify, collect, analyze, and appropriately interpret data needed to support product quality and risk decisions.
- Reviews technical analyses and recommendations for complex or higher-risk issues and ensures conclusions are technically sound, clearly communicated, and appropriately documented.
- Utilizes product testing, consumer complaints, returns, Quality Data Analytics, Play Lab findings, manufacturing performance, and other available data to identify trends, emerging risks, and improvement opportunities.
- Establishes and monitors appropriate KPIs and quality metrics for assigned areas and ensures meaningful trends and issues result in appropriate action.
- Communicates significant quality trends, risks, and recommendations to Quality Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Technical & Engineering Excellence
- Provides technical leadership and oversight for product investigations, root cause analysis, engineering studies, sampling strategies, risk assessments, product verification, and validation activities.
- Ensures appropriate use of investigation and problem-solving methodologies such as Fishbone diagrams, 5-Why, FMEA, and other applicable root cause analysis tools.
- Provides oversight and guidance for the development and maintenance of Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), Primary Concerns Documents (PCDs), testing strategies, and other Quality Engineering documentation.
- Ensures product concepts, intended play patterns, foreseeable use and misuse, consumer interactions, and identified product risks are appropriately translated into robust testing and verification strategies.
- Partners with internal laboratories and third-party testing organizations to ensure testing strategies appropriately address regulatory requirements, identified risks, and product performance expectations.
- Ensures investigations and corrective actions are thorough, technically sound, appropriately documented, and completed in a timely manner.
- Provides technical guidance on the appropriate application and interpretation of statistical analyses, sampling plans, engineering studies, and quality data.
- Ensures appropriate execution of risk management activities and application of tools such as FMEA, FTA, PHA, and other applicable risk analysis methodologies.
- Maintains a thorough understanding of internal Quality Management System procedures and ensures the team operates in compliance with applicable processes and requirements.
Product & Consumer Quality
- Ensures product knowledge, foreseeable consumer use, and play patterns are incorporated into Quality Engineering decisions and product risk assessments.
- Utilizes quality system data, consumer feedback, testing results, product returns, manufacturing performance, and post-market information to understand product and process performance.
- Identifies opportunities to improve product quality, reliability, durability, and consumer satisfaction based on available data and lessons learned.
- Leads or supports investigation and resolution of significant post-market product quality and safety issues within assigned areas.
- Partners with cross-functional teams to ensure lessons learned from consumer and field performance are incorporated into current and future product development.
Culture & Continuous Improvement
- Fosters a culture of quality, consumer safety, accountability, continuous learning, and shared ownership within the team and across cross-functional partnerships.
- Identifies and leads continuous improvement initiatives within assigned areas through the appropriate application of continuous improvement methodologies and tools.
- Assesses Quality Engineering processes and identifies opportunities to improve effectiveness, consistency, scalability, and efficiency.
- Leads cross-functional improvement efforts and ensures improvements maintain compliance with regulatory requirements, standards, and internal Quality Management System requirements.
- Uses KPIs, quality metrics, lessons learned, and benchmarking to identify opportunities for improvement.
- Promotes adoption and sharing of best practices across Quality Engineering teams.
- Builds business cases, as appropriate, for significant improvement opportunities and communicates the expected quality, operational, consumer, and business impact.
Qualifications
What We’re Looking For:
- Exceptional interpersonal and people leadership skills with demonstrated ability to lead, coach, develop, and motivate technical professionals.
- Demonstrated knowledge of consumer product regulatory standards, with an emphasis on toys or children's products.
- Strong technical judgment with the ability to evaluate complex product quality, safety, regulatory, manufacturing, and consumer issues and make sound risk-based decisions.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with demonstrated ability to use data to identify solutions and drive effective actions.
- Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and leaders without direct authority.
- Ability to balance product safety, compliance, quality, consumer experience, business needs, cost, and schedule while maintaining appropriate quality standards.
- Demonstrated ability to effectively manage multiple projects, team priorities, and resources without missing critical deadlines.
- High level of personal and professional integrity and trustworthiness with a strong work ethic, sound judgment, and accountability.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including listening and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical issues clearly and concisely.
- Resourceful, diplomatic, and professional, with the ability to build strong relationships across functions, geographies, and organizational levels.
- Collaborative leader with strong results orientation, positive attitude, and demonstrated ability to create accountability while maintaining effective working relationships.
- Demonstrated ability to develop others through coaching, feedback, technical mentoring, and meaningful development opportunities.
- Adaptable; able to shift priorities and focus as departmental, product development, and business demands change.
Experience, Education, & Skills:
- Bachelor's degree in Industrial, Electrical, Mechanical, Materials Engineering, or related technical discipline.
- 6+ years of progressive experience in product development, product engineering, manufacturing, or quality roles, preferably within toys, children's products, or consumer products.
- Previous experience leading engineers, technical teams, or significant cross-functional programs; formal people-management experience preferred.
- Working knowledge of global toy and consumer product safety standards and regulatory requirements.
- Strong knowledge of Quality Management System structure, procedures, and implementation.
- Experience with product development processes from concept through production and post-market support.
- Knowledge of risk management principles and tools such as FMEA, FTA, PHA, and other structured risk assessment methodologies.
- Knowledge of engineering and quality tools including statistical analysis, Cause-and-Effect Analysis, root cause analysis, process mapping, sampling methodologies, and engineering studies.
- Experience interpreting quality and product performance data and applying statistical analysis to support engineering decisions.
- Experience working with internal and/or third-party product testing laboratories.
- Experience supporting global manufacturing, suppliers, and product development organizations.
- Knowledge of Human Factors/Usability Engineering principles and their application to toys and consumer products preferred.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office, project management tools, and statistical analysis software such as Minitab.
*The pay range is indicative of projected hiring range, however base pay will be determined based on a candidate’s work location, skills and experience. Mattel offers competitive total pay programs, comprehensive benefits, and resources to help empower a culture where every employee can reach their full potential.
Additional Information
Don’t meet every single requirement? At Mattel, we are dedicated to an inclusive workplace and a culture of belonging. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. Join Mattel's Talent Community and start receiving exciting updates about our company, our employees, and our culture. Also, interested in signing up for job alerts? Do so here!
How We Work:
We are a purpose driven company aiming to empower generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. We live up to our purpose employing the following behaviors:
- We collaborate: Being a part of Mattel means being part of one team with shared values and common goals. Every person counts and working closely together always brings better results. Partnership is our process and our collective capabilities is our superpower.
- We innovate: At Mattel we always aim to find new and better ways to create innovative products and experiences. No matter where you work in the organization, you can always make a difference and have real impact. We welcome new ideas and value new initiatives that challenge conventional thinking.
- We execute: We are a performance-driven company. We strive for excellence and are focused on pursuing best-in-class outcomes. We believe in accountability and ownership and know that our people are at their best when they are empowered to create and deliver results.
Who We Are:
Mattel is a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, UNO, Masters of the Universe, Matchbox, Monster High, MEGA and Polly Pocket, as well as other popular properties that we own or license in partnership with global entertainment companies. Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital and live experiences. Our products are sold in collaboration with the world’s leading retail and ecommerce companies. Since its founding in 1945, Mattel is proud to be a trusted partner in empowering generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential.
Mattel’s award-winning workplace culture has been recognized by Forbes, Fast Company, Newsweek, Great Place to Work, TIME, and more.
Visit us at https://jobs.mattel.com/ and www.instagram.com/MattelCareers.
Mattel is an Equal Opportunity Employer where we want you to bring your authentic self to work every day. We welcome all job seekers, and all applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran and protected veteran status, disability status, and or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state or local law.
Pursuant to the Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act, qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment.
Videos to watch:
The Culture at Mattel
Corporate Philanthropy
Company Description
CREATIVITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER. It’s our heritage and it’s also our future. Because we don’t just make toys. We create innovative products and experiences that inspire fans, entertain audiences and develop children through play. Mattel is at its best when every member of our team feels respected, included, and heard—when everyone can show up as themselves and do their best work every day. We value and share an infinite range of ideas and voices that evolve and broaden our perspectives with a reach that extends into all our brands, partners, and suppliers.
The Team:
The Quality Engineering team is responsible for working with the product design and development groups to influence design and engineering decisions that uphold all consumer, regulatory, and brand expectations for quality, safety, and reliability. We also work directly with international quality and manufacturing teams to support pre-production debug and any post-production issues that may arise. This is a group that makes data-driven decisions and creates the appropriate rationale for our requirements.
