[Hiring] Vice President of Quality @Stord

Role Description

Stord is looking for a Vice President of Quality to build and lead the quality function across our fulfillment network. This leader will own the systems, standards, and operating mechanisms that ensure inventory is accurate, processes are followed, and every order moves through our network the way it was designed to. The mandate spans the full lifecycle of inventory inside our buildings from inbound receipt and putaway through picking, packing, sorting, and outbound shipment.

This is an independent quality function. While our Operations teams are responsible for delivering volume efficiently, the VP of Quality is responsible for ensuring we never achieve speed, growth, or cost improvements by compromising inventory integrity or execution quality.

This leader should be an inventory and fulfillment quality expert at heart — someone who understands how inventory moves through a complex fulfillment operation, knows where process breakdowns create downstream failures, and is relentless about identifying and eliminating root causes.

What You'll Own

• Inventory Health & Accuracy
  • Own inventory health and accuracy across Stord's fulfillment network.
  • Establish the standards, controls, and operating mechanisms required to maintain book-to-floor and floor-to-book inventory integrity.
  • Own cycle counting, inventory reconciliation, adjustment governance, and inventory variance reduction.
  • Build mechanisms to identify inventory defects early and systematically eliminate their root causes.
  • Establish network-level metrics and reporting that make inventory health visible and actionable.
• Fulfillment Process Quality
  • Own process adherence across inbound, receiving, putaway, picking, packing, sorting, and outbound operations.
  • Define the critical quality controls for each process path and ensure sites consistently execute against them.
  • Build audit mechanisms that identify process drift before it becomes a customer or inventory issue.
  • Partner with Operations, Product, Engineering, and Data to eliminate systemic sources of defects.
  • Develop a clear view of transaction volume, exception rates, and defect rates by process path to identify where quality is breaking down.
• Lot Control & Regulatory Compliance
  • Own lot, expiration-date, and inventory-attribute accuracy across applicable customers and facilities.
  • Establish controls for FIFO, FEFO, lot traceability, recalls, quarantine, and other regulated inventory requirements.
  • Ensure Stord's operating processes meet applicable customer, regulatory, and contractual quality requirements.
  • Build a quality organization capable of supporting increasingly complex and regulated categories as Stord grows.
• Continuous Improvement
  • Build a rigorous root-cause and corrective-action discipline across the fulfillment network.
  • Turn recurring defects into permanent process, system, or training improvements rather than repeatedly solving individual incidents.
  • Identify network-wide trends and deploy standardized improvements across sites.
  • Partner with Product and Engineering to ensure recurring operational defects inform the technology roadmap.
  • Create a culture where defects are surfaced quickly, investigated objectively, and permanently resolved.
• Quality Organization
  • Build and lead Stord's network Quality and Inventory Control organization.
  • Establish clear ownership and accountability between Quality and Operations.
  • Develop site and regional quality leaders capable of independently auditing operational performance.
  • Serve as the executive escalation point when inventory integrity, regulatory compliance, or fulfillment quality is at risk.
  • Maintain an independent point of view and be willing to stop, challenge, or redesign processes when quality standards are not being met.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience across fulfillment quality, inventory control, operational excellence, distribution, or supply chain operations, including significant leadership experience.
• Experience leading quality or inventory control across a multi-site fulfillment or distribution network.
• Background from a scaled 3PL, retailer, e-commerce fulfillment network, food distribution company, or similarly complex physical operation.
• Deep fluency in inventory control, WMS-driven processes, cycle counting, reconciliation, lot control, and inventory accuracy.
• Understanding of the mechanics of inbound, putaway, pick, pack, sort, and outbound processes — and how defects in one process create downstream failures elsewhere.
• Experience building quality systems based on data, audits, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and measurable defect reduction.
• Comfortable challenging Operations leadership when execution does not meet the required standard.
• Experience in environments where quality and compliance cannot be traded for throughput or cost.
• Ideally brings experience from food, grocery, pharmaceutical, healthcare, or another environment with rigorous lot, expiration, traceability, or regulatory requirements.
• Ability to operate strategically at the executive level while still being willing to go onto the warehouse floor, trace an inventory discrepancy through a WMS, and understand exactly where a process failed.