Sr. Engineering Program Director, Quality Strategy & Investigation Excellence

Job description

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on - 9 Nov 2026 Careers that change lives start here. Medtronic is a global leader in healthcare technology with a Mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. Our 95,000 employees work across more than 150 countries to put patients first — developing innovative medical technologies that improve the lives of 72+ million patients each year. Your unique talents will help shape the future of healthcare while building a career grounded in purpose, growth, and impact. A Day in the LifeWorking closely with leaders across Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, R&D, Clinical, Regulatory, Supply Chain, Customer Experience, and Digital organizations globally, you will establish and scale capabilities in root cause investigation, reliability engineering, advanced analytics, and quality intelligence. You will play a key role in driving investigation excellence, accelerating problem resolution, improving CAPA effectiveness, and enabling a more predictive and proactive quality organization. This role requires a leader who can influence across organizational boundaries, develop technical capability, and guide the resolution of the most complex quality and reliability challenges facing the business. The role aligns with the organization's vision of connecting customer experience, field performance, analytics, reliability, and quality intelligence to improve business decisions and quality outcomes. As Senior Director, Quality Strategy & Investigation Excellence, you will be accountable for building and sustaining capabilities across Reliability Engineering, Statistics & Analytics, and Root Cause Excellence. You will lead multiple strategic workstreams including investigation methodology, Quality Reliability Engineering capability development, advanced analytical approaches, and critical quality event support. You will partner across a global matrix to strengthen investigation effectiveness, improve organizational learning, and ensure quality decisions are increasingly data-driven, risk-based, and customer-focused. This role requires a leader who can balance strategy and execution, coach technical experts, align stakeholders, and build long-term organizational capability. Responsibilities may include the following and other duties may be assigned. Establish and lead a centralized Investigation Excellence Engineering capability. Develop organizational strategy for Root Cause Analysis and advanced quality analytics. Lead the deployment and governance of advanced investigation methodologies, including: Shainin Red X, Lean Six-Sigma, and other structured problem-solving approaches. Own escalation support for critical investigations, major quality events, recalls, and CAPAs. Build communities of practice and technical career pathways for Quality Reliability Engineers. Develop and mentor technical experts in investigation disciplines. Establish standards for investigation quality, analytical rigor, and root cause determination. Partner with Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, and R&D leaders to proactively identify emerging signals and improve product performance. Advance the organization's transition toward predictive, data-driven, and proactive quality management. Plans, directs and implements all aspects of the company's design and development of new medical device products or software systems. May develop, evaluate, implement and maintain technical quality assurance and control systems or reliability systems and standards pertaining to materials, techniques, or company products. Oversees the investigation and evaluation of existing technologies. Guides the conceptualization of new methodologies, materials, machines, processes or products. Directs the development of new concepts from initial design to market release. Manages feasibility studies of the design to determine if capable of functioning as intended. Monitors documentation maintenance throughout all phases of research and development. Organizes the coordination of activities with outside suppliers and consultants to ensure timely delivery. Selects, develops and evaluates personnel to ensure the efficient operation of the function. PROGRAM MANAGEMENT CAREER STREAM: Program Managers and Directors focus on tactical, operational activities for a major program with broad or ongoing impact. Levels within the program management career stream typically accomplish program objectives through matrixed employee teams and / or vendors who are not direct reports but for which the incumbent has direct accountability to lead. The majority of time is spent overseeing their area of responsibility, managing program/team performance, communicating project and operational developments, planning, prioritizing and / or directing the responsibilities of program team members. Goal achievement is typically accomplished through performance of program team members. DIFFERENTIATING FACTORS Autonomy: Manages multiple major, strategic programs and initiatives across the organization that require strong influence outside of immediate program stakeholders. Is accountable for overall program portfolio success. Assesses business strategy and recommends new programs or program changes. Organizational Impact: Establishes program portfolio objectives, timelines, milestones, and budgets for multiple interconnected programs. Identifies business need and establishes new policies and procedures that affect program management. Has budget accountability for one or more strategic programs. Program decisions are made independently with strategic or costly decisions recommended to higher level management. Innovation and Complexity: Problems and issues faced are complex, undefined and impact multiple businesses, functions or programs, where information is typically difficult to obtain and extensive investigation to understand the root cause of problems is required. Responsible for changing or improving upon entire processes or systems using significant conceptualizing, reasoning and interpretation skills. Communication and Influence: Communicates and conducts briefings with senior or executive leadership regarding new strategic program proposals and critical program outcomes. Serves as principal spokesperson for multiple programs, interacting with leaders and executives on highly significant matters . Influences across functions, businesses and with external stakeholders to gain support of strategic programs where there are competing objectives and perspectives . Leadership and Talent Management: Leads a matrixed large unit that typically includes multiple teams led by Program Managers and/or vendors. Approves tasks and schedule necessary for successful program execution. Not directly responsible for hire or fire decisions and people management. Required Knowledge and Experience: Requires advanced management and leadership knowledge to lead cross-department project teams or manage across multiple functions. Typically has mastery within a specific technical or broad expertise across multiple related disciplines. Requires a Baccalaureate degree (or for degrees earned outside of the United States, a degree which satisfies the requirements of 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(h)( 4)(iii)(A) and minimum of 15 years of relevant experience with 10+ years of managerial experience, or advanced degree with a minimum 13 years of relevant experience and 10+ years of managerial experience. Preferred Knowledge and Experience: Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Materials Science, or related discipline. Medical Device, Aerospace, Defense, Semiconductor, Automotive, Energy, or other high-reliability industry experience. Expertise in advanced root cause methodologies such as:Shainin Red X Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) Apollo RCA Event & Causal Factor Analysis Physics of Failure Reliability-Centered investigation