Description

As Product Assurance and Safety Manager*, you will be assigned to the Product Assurance (PA) Management Section, Quality and PA Management Division, Quality Department, Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

The Section provides functional support to ESA projects in different programme directorates, as well as to technology development activities, and is also responsible for the development, implementation and maintenance of Product Assurance and Safety engineering and management programmes. It carries out technological research (R&D) in PA&S management, techniques, methodologies and tools. It collaborates on standardisation and training activities.

You will manage the Product Assurance and Safety aspects for exploration payloads in the Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration Programmes. In that context, you will also report to the Utilisation Team Leaders of the Low Earth Orbit, Lunar and Martian Exploration Groups and to the Human and Robotic Exploration PA&S Team Leader for the specific responsibilities and duties outlined below.

* PA&S covers safety assurance, reliability, availability, maintainability, quality assurance, components, materials and processes, planetary protection and software product assurance.

Duties

Your main tasks and responsibilities will include:

• establishing and maintaining the relevant PA&S requirements baseline in compliance with ESA policies; 
• ensuring the implementation of the PA&S requirements by payload developers, supporting milestone reviews and participating in the process to verify compliance with requirements;
• monitoring the implementation of approved payload developers’ plans and specifications, ensuring that adequate resources are deployed for the execution of the PA&S programme;
• planning, coordinating and monitoring the assigned PA&S workforce providing support;
• participating in the boards for the disposition of deviations from the requirements baseline, and of changes to the agreed design;
• representing ESA in the boards established for the disposition of non-conformances and anomalies and the definition and monitoring of relevant corrective and preventive actions (NRB), for failure investigations, and for project technical reviews, such as MRR, TRR, PTR and TRB;
• ensuring the implementation of the Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) programme and the Software Assurance programme, including their support to design trade-off decisions and verification of requirements;
• monitoring the selection, procurement and use of electrical, electronic and electromechanical (EEE) components and materials, processes and mechanical (MPM) parts;
• ensuring the monitoring of the manufacturing, assembly, integration and test activities through mandatory and key inspection points, test witnessing and quality assurance checks, for example;
• conducting the acceptance reviews of all contractual deliverable items;
• reviewing the safety data packages from payload developers as required, ensuring that they are made available on time to the corresponding Safety Review Panel, and supporting safety reviews and other key events for flight, ground and launch safety;
• supervising PA&S activities during the launch campaign;
• performing any other PA&S tasks necessary to ensure a safe and successful mission.

In carrying out these tasks, you will receive support from experts from the project team and from the ESA Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

For more information, please refer to ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

A master’s degree in a relevant engineering or scientific discipline is required for this post.

Additional requirements

Proven experience in the area of payload development and systems engineering is required.
In addition, you should have: 

• proven experience of teamwork within a project;
• the ability to coordinate people without direct authority;
• the ability to drive performance and foster cooperation within and across teams throughout the organisation;
• demonstrated relationship management and oral and written communication skills;
• excellent cognitive, analytical, delegation, planning and organisational skills;
• the ability to anticipate problems, resolve complex issues and relate situations to their context;
• the ability to make solution-oriented, pragmatic and timely decisions of a high standard and integrity and to support others, such as team members, upper management and other stakeholders, in this process.

Previous experience working with international partners, such as other space agencies, is an advantage.