The AML Story
We've come a long way. We have 51 years of experience designing and building oceanographic instrumentation and have clocked consistent year-on-year growth of greater than 15%. We have customers on all seven continents. Most importantly, we've built a 70+ person team of employees that care about customer outcomes. In our market, we are known for two things: 1) Going to the ends of the earth to make our customers successful; and 2) Bringing fresh ideas to an established market. Earlier this year, we were acquired by Union Park Capital. Our mission? To drive the success of Union Park's marine technology thesis. AML's role is to be the starting point and platform of that thesis, growing our core business while carefully extending our solution set via acquisition. We anticipate dramatic growth and significant change in the next 3 to 5 years.
How we Operate
At AML, we do things a bit differently. Think daily huddles. Think Rockefeller Habits, Scaling Up, and the One Page Plan. Think town hall meetings with on-the-fly Q&A sessions. If you are familiar with these concepts - or they interest you - then you might be a fit for AML. We're want people who look forward to committing their hands, their heads, and their hearts to their position. You see this commitment in our employee Glass Door rating: 4.70 on 5.00.
What you inherit
An established marine instrumentation business with a growing acquisition footprint. Multi-BU operating model across Victoria BC, Halifax NS, and Plymouth UK. A quality function that needs to evolve from per-BU reactive into a unified, data-driven, cross-BU discipline. You'll inherit a Quality role that is currently vacant — building from a clean slate with executive sponsorship from the COO and partnership with VP of Engineering.
Your Mission
You will build the quality plumbing across all BUs. You will design the quality data ecosystem and close the data gaps that prevent us from seeing quality clearly. You will ensure every NC moves through the workflow without stagnating, and every RCA reaches a definitive conclusion. You will be the advocate who makes sure customer Sev 1s get urgent ENG attention without needing the COO to chase. You will standardize quality processes across BUs and bring new acquisitions onto the AML quality system within 180 days. And you will run the monthly LT Quality Review that makes quality visible to leadership and drives action items to closure. What you will NOT do: fix the actual defects (that's ENG), communicate with customers (that's Service), resolve supplier quality issues (that's the BU's supply chain team), or own product certifications (that's VP of Eng). You ARE the quality data + process discipline + cross-BU advocate + LT cadence runner.
What You'll be Accountable For
- Owns Sev 1 NC Resolution
- Data Capture Embedded in Quality Systems
- Owns NC Process & RCA Discipline
- Owns Standardization Across All BUs
- Owns Quality Review Cadence
- Plays for the First Team First
Some Other Daily Duties
- Capture → triage → route → track → close. Maintains the canonical NCR process and ensures all BUs (and acquired entities) operate on it.
- Opens, owners, validates, and closes CAPAs across all sites. Tracks backlog weekly; surfaces at-risk items to LT Quality Review.
- Severity 1 / 2 / 3 classification on every inbound issue. Routes to ENG with clear severity reasoning.
- Escalates Sev 1s in ENG queue when SLA risk emerges. Ensures customer comms happen via Service team (does not communicate directly with customers).
- Surveys quality data across BUs, identifies blind spots (e.g., metric not captured, signal not aggregated), drives gap-closure projects to definitive solutions.
- Ensures one quality system, not many. Handles BU-specific exceptions with documented sunset plans.
- Day-0 to Day-180 playbook for acquired companies — adopts NCR / CAPA / standards / data definitions onto AML platform.
- Sets agenda, prepares quality data package, identifies action items needed, runs meeting cadence (COO chairs), tracks action items to closure. The cadence that surfaces quality at LT level.
- Identifies via data trend analysis when a supplier is generating quality issues (rising defect rate, repeated NCs). Flags to VP of BU — does NOT own supplier-side resolution (that's the BU's supply chain team).
Your Skills & Competencies
- Data Pattern Recognition: Reads defect / return / scrap / NCR data; spots trend changes before they hit headline metrics; distinguishes signal from noise; identifies what data SHOULD exist that doesn't (gap detection).
- Process Architecture: Designs quality processes that scale across multiple sites, BUs, and acquired entities; documents in language an operator can follow without an expert nearby; anticipates degradation modes and designs for resilience.
- Diagnostic Thinking (RCA): Drills past first-order symptoms to underlying mechanism; fluent with 5-Why, fishbone, FMEA — knows when each applies; refuses convenient closures.
- Cross-Functional Influence (Framing & Credibility): Frames asks in the receiver's priority language (ENG's vs Manufacturing's vs Service's); builds long-term credibility through pattern of accurate calls; receiver listens because past contributions have been worth listening to.
- Calibrated Persistence: Squeaky wheel without burning bridges; reads emotional / political state of the recipient before pushing; knows when to escalate, when to wait, how to repeat the ask without becoming abrasive.
- ISO 9001 QMS Fluency: Working-level knowledge of ISO 9001 QMS architecture, audit evidence requirements, CAPA closure standards, NC documentation norms; interprets audit findings without translation. Hard-edge technical capability. Note: does NOT include product certifications (CE, FCC) — those live with VP of Eng.
- Narrative Construction (Data → Action): Turns trend data into a story executives ACT on, not just receive; writes for scanners, not readers; sequences findings so the 'what to do' is unavoidable.
- Systems Thinking (Cross-Function): Sees how processes interact across functions; recognizes when a quality issue is symptomatic of a cross-functional handoff rather than a local failure; reads dependencies upstream and downstream.
What Other Experience is Required?
Education
Bachelor's in engineering, manufacturing, or quality. ASQ CQE (Certified Quality Engineer) or Six Sigma Green/Black Belt strongly preferred. ISO 9001 lead auditor certification a plus.
Experience
7+ years in quality engineering or quality systems role. Hands-on experience with NCR / CAPA workflows and ISO 9001 QMS. Multi-site or multi-BU operational experience strongly preferred. Experience in environments with field-deployed products (where customer Sev 1s matter) preferred over pure manufacturing. Experience integrating quality systems through acquisition a plus.
Industry Background
Industrial / instrumentation / sensor / oceanographic preferred but not required. Growth-stage operating experience a plus.
Other
Canadian work authorization (or eligibility). Willingness to base in Victoria BC or Halifax NS with regular travel to BUs and acquired entities. Comfortable being the squeaky wheel. Strong process discipline; data-driven; comfortable with influence-without-authority across multiple BUs. Does NOT communicate directly with customers (that's Service team).
How to Apply
Please forward your application (in PDF format only) to hr @ AMLoceanographic.com. In your cover letter, please: 1) speak to what you'd do in your first 100 days in the role; 2) identify the 3 most impactful professional lessons you've learned, with specific examples from your career; and 3) name your personal core values, along with relevant examples of how you've applied each value to guide high stakes business decisions.
Pay: $81,000.00-$110,000.00 per year
Location:
- Saanichton, BC V8M 2A5 (preferred)
Work Location: In person
