Principal Supplier Quality Engineer

About Halter At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you’ll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We’re committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn’t easy, and in truth, we love that it’s hard. We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund , Bessemer Venture Partners , BOND, DCVC , Blackbird , Promus Ventures , Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures . To find out more, visit our LinkedIn & Instagram . About the role Halter's component suppliers are predominantly based across Asia. The components they produce have to be right before they ever reach our contract manufacturers. When something is wrong, we need someone on the ground who can get to the root cause fast, push through to a real fix, and prevent it from happening again. The Supplier Quality Principal is Halter's senior technical authority embedded in Asia. You'll lead highly technical supplier audits, own complex quality problem-solving at our suppliers, and work directly with both suppliers and Halter's design teams to ensure that what comes off a supplier's production line meets the standard we set. You'll operate with a high degree of autonomy, covering a portfolio of suppliers across the region and acting as the technical bridge between our Asia supply base and the Halter team in Auckland. This is not a compliance role. Ticking audit checkboxes and filing reports is not what this job is about. The best person for this role is someone who goes deep: who can walk a production line and immediately identify what's controlling quality and what isn't, who can sit with a supplier's engineers and work through a failure mode from first principles, and who knows the difference between a corrective action that actually solves a problem and one that just looks good on paper. You'll report to the Head of Supplier Quality and work closely with Halter's hardware design and operations teams. When there's a quality issue in Asia that needs solving, you're the person we call. You'll be measured on the technical quality of audits, the speed and effectiveness of issue resolution at suppliers, and your ability to build supplier capability over time. What You'll Do Technical Supplier Auditing Lead technically rigorous audits of Halter's component suppliers across Asia, going well beyond system compliance to assess process control, measurement capability, and the reliability of how suppliers actually build and inspect parts. Identify the real drivers of quality performance at a supplier, not just the documented procedures, and develop clear, prioritised findings that distinguish between critical risks and cosmetic gaps. Conduct pre-qualification audits of new suppliers, assessing their technical capability and readiness to meet Halter's design and quality requirements before commitments are made. Run periodic surveillance audits to verify that corrective actions have been implemented effectively and that quality performance is being sustained. Develop and continuously improve Halter's audit methodology and supplier assessment criteria, ensuring audits capture what actually matters for component quality. Technical Problem Solving Own the resolution of complex quality issues at suppliers, using first-principles analysis to identify root cause and drive effective corrective actions rather than superficial fixes. When a production failure or OQC rejection occurs, lead rapid on-site analysis with supplier engineers and Halter's design team to understand the failure mode, assess risk to in-flight inventory, and define the fastest path to resolution. Work with suppliers to improve their process controls, measurement systems, and inspection methods so that quality issues are caught and corrected at source, not downstream. Coach supplier engineering teams to develop their own capability for root cause analysis and corrective action, building their ability to self-solve rather than depend on Halter for every issue. Escalate issues clearly and early when resolution is taking too long, a supplier is not engaging in good faith, or a quality risk to production is emerging. Quality Assurance Specifications Implement and maintain Halter's qu