Sr. Manager - Process Assurance

About Merlin: Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation.

Lead and grow a team of engineers spanning configuration management, development assurance, process assurance, and software quality assurance.

Own configuration management and partner with key leaders in the engineering and flight test organization to manage the development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of these processes.

Parter with all technical leaders to standardize and deploy core processes within engineering, ensuring they comply with established policies and guidance, and reflect best practices to support future certification.

Establish and run a compliance auditing program verifying that engineering process documents and their execution meet established policy and guidance for military and civil certification of autonomous systems.

Represent process assurance in interactions with certification authorities, designated engineering representatives, and customer quality, providing objective evidence of process compliance and maturity.

Serve as the primary point of contact for DCMA and other government quality assurance representatives on military programs, providing evidence of process compliance during surveillance and audits.

Drive continuous improvement of engineering processes based on audit findings, program lessons learned, and evolving regulatory guidance, balancing rigor with the pace a fast-growing company requires.

Lead root-cause and corrective action analysis to close audit findings and prevent recurrence.

Report to the VP of Airworthiness & Certification on process health, audit outcomes, open findings, and the improvement roadmap across engineering.

Build scalable, repeatable process frameworks so process assurance stays ahead of planned growth.

Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related technical field, with 12+ years of experience in aerospace systems, software, or hardware development, including significant experience in configuration management, process assurance, and development assurance.

Direct working knowledge on completed certification programs of configuration management, DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A/B, and ARP4761A.

Working knowledge of software/tool qualification (DO-330) as applied to development and verification tools used on certification programs.

5+ years of experience leading or managing a team of engineers, including hiring, mentoring, and performance management across multiple technical disciplines.

Experience developing, auditing, or defending engineering process documentation for regulatory or customer compliance with a track record of successful internal or external audits (System Reviews, e.g., FAA Stage of Involvement per Order 8110.4C/8110.49).

Working knowledge of military airworthiness process, civil (FAA) certification frameworks, systems safety, and quality management system standards (e.g., SAE EIA-649B, MIL-STD-882E, AS9100D) as applied to engineering process documentation.

U.S. citizenship required and ability to obtain security clearance.

Experience with ASTM F3230 and F3061 consensus standards, or other Part 23 / consensus-based certification bases relevant to small and autonomous aircraft.

Experience leading development and implementation of complex PLM tools

Experience managing problem reporting tools including standardization and analytics across common programs.

Background in autonomous or unmanned aviation systems, or another safety-critical domain where process rigor and rapid iteration must coexist.

Experience building or scaling configuration management and process assurance functions in a startup.

Active clearance. TS preferred.

Experience with CMMI-based process maturity appraisals for DoD-facing engineering organizations.

Experience with airworthiness cybersecurity certification (DO-326A/ED-202A, DO-356A) and integrating security risk assessment into certification evidence.

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