Job Summary: The Supplier Quality Engineer - Technical Specialist concentrates his/her product specific quality and technical skills to develop complex suppliers and products that can meet customer requirements; requires strong partnerships with the external supply base, with supply chain teams and with engineering to achieve results Key Responsibilities: Build strong relationships with all critical partners to improve quality and business outcomes, including: external suppliers, external customers, and internal customers and stakeholders, such as Purchasing, Manufacturing and Engineering; coach and mentor professionals on how to strengthen the soft skills required to develop effective relationships. Support the cross-functional development of external supply base strategies and the cross-functional supplier selection process for any given component; experience and skills will be utilized to support increasingly complex products. Provide manufacturing consultation to external suppliers in order to design a Right First Time manufacturing process that enables conformance to the engineering print, engineering standards and customer specific requirements; experience and skills will be utilized to support increasingly complex products. Apply industry common Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) processes, Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) tools, and specialty tools to develop zero defect components within the external supply base; coach and mentor Supplier and professionals on how to improve effectiveness of APQP execution; experience and skills will be utilized to support increasingly complex products. Embrace continuous improvement in the external supply base by leading complex product and process focused projects that utilize industry proven methodologies, such as lean and six-sigma. Conduct external supplier audits in support of supplier risk mitigation, supplier readiness, and supplier performance improvement; coach and mentor professionals on how to improve auditing effectiveness. Lead increasingly complex quality improvement plans within the external supply base in order to improve supplier performance. Ensure resolution of increasingly complex external supplier related quality challenges, by leading root cause analysis, by supporting development of corrective actions and by verifying the effectiveness of corrective actions; coach and mentor Supplier and professionals on how to improve effectiveness of problem resolution.