Switchgear Design Jobs in Minnesota (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:

The Sr. Design Assurance Engineer owns design quality for Forgent's Solutions product lines: find recurring design errors, drive root cause and corrective action, and catch defects before they reach manufacturing.

The role also owns the two governance forums where design issues and changes are dispositioned: the Corrective Action Review Board (CARB) and the engineering change control (ECC) process, including the Change Control Board (CCB).

Key Responsibilities:

• Run the CARB for design issues: set agenda and cadence, present incoming issues, and secure an owner, containment action, and due date for every accepted item.
• Perform root cause analysis on design defects, non-conformances, and field issues, and drive corrective actions that prevent recurrence rather than fix one job.
• Own closure: track actions against due dates, escalate stalled items, verify effectiveness with evidence, and close only once the fix is embedded in a standard, checklist, template, or tool.

• Manage the ECC process end to end: intake, review, disposition, implementation, verification, and closure, with clear rules for what requires board review.
• Run the CCB: convene on a fixed cadence, prepare change packages, drive each to a documented disposition, and hold owners to committed implementation dates.
• Confirm approved changes land in every affected document and system (drawings, schematics, models, BOMs, PLM/PDM), and enforce change record data quality.

• Attend cross functional design reviews as the design quality voice and support the peer and team lead tiers, bringing known failure modes and open corrective actions into each.
• Ensure design review effectiveness and adherence to the process.
• Publish review effectiveness as a red/green indicator by review type, project, and site. Own the design quality metrics: design accuracy by engineer and by project, issue closure rate, and escape rate into manufacturing.

• Quantify the cost, rework, and schedule impact of design driven engineering changes.
• Prioritize root cause analysis on the design issues that disrupt manufacturing flow.
• Classify root causes as process, person, or tool, and aim the countermeasure accordingly.
• Maintain Pareto and trend analysis by product line, site, discipline, root cause, and change cycle time, and drive top contributors to permanent resolution through CARB.
• Improve design standards, checklists, and training to stop design issues from recurring.

• Share ECC and design change analysis with engineering on a regular cadence: top failure modes and the actions addressing them.
• Report performance to engineering and Quality leadership: CARB and CCB throughput, open and overdue actions, change volume and cycle time, and top Pareto items with countermeasure progress.

• Partner with the Engineering Managers to drive open design quality actions to closure.
• Standardize design quality practices, corrective action handling, and change control across Solutions sites (Hanover, Champlin, Dayton).
• Verify that UL listing and labeling escapes (UL 891 / UL 1558) are addressed at the design stage.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline.
• 5+ years in design engineering or quality engineering within electrical equipment, switchgear/switchboard, or panel manufacturing.
• Problem solving and root cause analysis (8D, A3, DMAIC) and CAPA experience.
• Experience owning an engineering change control process (ECO/ECN) and facilitating a cross functional board (CCB, CARB, or MRB).
• Able to turn quality and change data into Pareto, trend, and cost of poor quality analysis, and translate findings into process or standard changes. Strong Excel required; Power BI or Smartsheet a plus.
• Working knowledge of low voltage switchboard/switchgear design and UL 891 / UL 1558 requirements.
• Familiarity with design and PLM/PDM tools such as AutoCAD Electrical, SolidWorks, Autodesk Vault, and Fusion Manage.
• Able to present findings clearly to engineering and quality leadership.

Preferred:

• Multi-site engineering organization experience.
• Design engineering background.
• Quality or process focused experience.
• Six Sigma Green Belt or Lean certification.
• Experience chairing a change control or corrective action board.
• Quality and engineering change KPI reporting.

Benefits: 

• PTO/ESST
• Paid holidays
• $100 individual deductible and $300 family deductible health insurance
• Paid Weekly
• Vision and Dental Insurance
• 401K / Life Insurance / STD

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