Location: Manchester

Type: Permanent

Industry: Homeware

Job Ref: TGN5459

The Company

Excellent opportunity for a Senior Technologist – Homewares – Hybrid to join an established and dynamic manufacturing company.

As the Senior Technologist you will be responsible for leading and elevating all quality, sustainability, and compliance activities. The role sets the strategic direction for product quality standards, technical compliance, ethical auditing, and supply chain sustainability, ensuring customer requirements, global sustainability expectations, and internal quality objectives are met, to deliver best-in-class product and supplier performance.

This role would suit someone who is looking to progress their career working in a supportive and flexible working environment.

Excellent benefits including hybrid and flexible working

The Role:

1, Technical Quality Leadership,

• Product Development & Gold Standards, own all technical requirements for all products
• Validate all technical data, risks, tolerances and construction methods.
• Ensure customer specification data, technical files and fabric performance standards are accurate and communicated effectively.
• Authority for sign-off of fabric suitability, construction, performance and durability across all Home categories.
• Lead the NPI quality process from design handover through to bulk production.
• Oversee Gold Seal, Red Seal and NPI approvals.
• Ensure suppliers fully understand all technical and end-use requirements.
• Attend NPI, customer and pre-production meetings as the senior QC/Technical representative.
• Quality Issue Resolution, lead root-cause investigations & corrective actions across suppliers.
• Work with Asia mills to ensure product consistency and process capability.
• Coordinate and guide warehouse teams on physical spot-checks, including method, frequency and reporting.
• Act as the technical escalation point for all customer-facing QC issues.
• Testing & Technical Assurance, oversee all fabric and product testing (internal, supplier and external labs).
• Define and maintain minimum performance standards across all categories.
• Manage due-diligence testing programmes for key customers.
• Customer Quality & Compliance Expectations, manage all customer technical files
• Ensure specifications, testing and compliance data are submitted accurately and on time.
• Provide expert technical responses to customer enquiries and escalations.
• Monitor online and in-store customer reviews and proactively address quality trends.

2, Sustainability, Ethical & Chemical Compliance (Tier 1 & Tier 2)

• Lead compliance development across all Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers.
• Maintain and strengthen supply chain visibility.
• Ensure audit reports, corrective actions and documentation are submitted via customer platforms (e.g. Sedex).
• Ensure suppliers meet all customer sustainability expectations including Higg Index, GRS, REACH and OEKO-TEX.
• Identify opportunities for suppliers to gain new certifications and improve ESG performance.
• GRS, Yarn Traceability & Chemical Compliance
• Manage end-to-end yarn certification and chain-of-custody traceability.
• Maintain and govern chemical compliance data across all suppliers.
• Ensure compliance with RSL/MRSL requirements and global chemical standards.

3. Supplier & Factory Management, conduct quality and compliance reviews with mills.

• Strengthen mill capability, quality consistency and technical understanding.
• Ensure proactive problem-solving and early risk identification in fabrics and finished goods.
• Keep Commercial teams up to date with supplier compliance status to support NPD decisions.

4. Leadership, Strategy & Continuous Improvement, lead the Quality & Compliance strategy.

• Build and maintain a quality-driven culture across supplier and internal teams.
• Implement systems, KPIs and continuous improvement programmes.

Skills & Experience

• Senior experience in textile or soft furnishings quality management.
• Experience working with large multinational customer accounts.
• Deep technical knowledge of fabrics, construction and testing standards.
• Strong understanding of sustainability and compliance frameworks (GRS, Higg, REACH, OEKO-TEX etc.).
• Experience managing supply chains and offshore manufacturing.
• Strong analytical, communication and commercial-awareness skills.
• Proven leadership and supplier management capability.