Quality Engineer, Lithium Refinery

Tesla - Robstown, TX

Full-time - Mid Level

Robstown, TX

Motor Vehicle and Parts Dealers

About the position

Tesla's in-house Lithium Refinery is located in the greater Corpus Christi area of Texas. This investment is critical to our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy and represents our efforts to aggressively increase the supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide available in North America. Tesla is looking for a highly motivated Quality Engineer to join the Lithium Refinery Quality team. The person will support setting up the Quality Management System for incoming quality inspection, root cause analysis, critical battery material analysis/characterization, data analysis and reporting in both manufacturing and lab environments for our cutting-edge Tesla Lithium Refinery Plant.

Responsibilities

• Work collaboratively with Plant Operation, Product Design, Manufacturing Engineering, EPC, Safety, Production, Maintenance, and other cross-functional teams as the Lithium Quality expert to ensure production lines are designed and operated to produce high-quality, high-performance battery material
• Demonstrate strong sense of safety in all quality activities and drive the safety culture throughout the team
• Define and establish incoming quality control tasks to ensure manufacturing capability and product reliability, manage non-conforming material process flows and evaluate suspect materials while working closely with internal and external teams to quickly identify and resolve any material-related issues
• Work with the Quality, Production and relevant cross-functional teams for new lithium plant commissioning, scale up and product qualifications, and lead the identification, root cause analysis, and resolution of lithium materials related manufacturing quality issues
• Monitor and report the First Pass Quality (FPQ) and Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) to the stakeholders on a routine basis, and plan and participate in audits of Tesla and supplier manufacturing lines to ensure all processes follow the plan of record
• Establish quality management system for document control, sample management, record retention and management of change (MOC) implementation
• Drive cross-functional projects with manufacturing, supply chain, production quality, and research teams to test existing and determine new product specifications
• Collaborate with suppliers to initiate and implement Process Change Requests (PCRs) to improve manufacturability and field performance
• Lead PFMEA and QCP activities to ensure design and manufacturing issues are identified and risks mitigated

Requirements

• Degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, or related fields
• 5+ years relevant experience in a Quality Engineering capacity particularly in a chemical plant
• Experience commissioning new equipment and new processes into a production environment
• Strong understanding of engineering fundamentals and ability to apply them towards manufacturing quality
• Project management experience
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written. Experience creating various reports and database tools for management
• Ability to use technological tools and business system applications to manage, synthesize and interpret data
• Experience working with domestic/international vendors on technical projects
• Structured problems solving methodologies (DMAIC, 8D, etc.)

Nice-to-haves

• Desirable Experience includes programming (SQL, Python, MATLAB, R, etc.)
• Data analysis and visualization software (Tableau, JMP, Minitab, etc.)
• Design software (Adobe Creative Suite, CATIA SOLIDWORKS)
• Green Belt (Black Belt a plus)