Certification Team Lead

Scope/Purpose of the role: 

The Certification Team Lead is responsible for managing daily certification operations to ensure efficient delivery of certification services while maintaining compliance with applicable standards, regulatory requirements, accreditation requirements, and internal procedures. The role supports the Certification Manager by leading certification engineers, managing workload distribution, monitoring operational performance, improving turnaround time (TAT), maintaining technical competency, supporting audits, and driving continual improvement of certification processes

Essential Functions:

• Manage and coordinate day-to-day certification activities to ensure projects are completed within agreed timelines and quality requirements.
• Review incoming certification applications and assign work to certification engineers based on competency, workload, certification scope, and project priorities.
• Monitor operational KPIs including turnaround time (TAT), backlog, productivity, certification volume, file quality, and customer commitments.
• Identify process bottlenecks and implement improvement actions to enhance efficiency, reduce delays, improve TAT, and increase customer satisfaction.
• Provide technical guidance and support to certification engineers during certification reviews, technical evaluations, and complex certification cases.
• Ensure certification activities comply with applicable product standards, certification schemes, ISO/IEC 17065 requirements, accreditation requirements, and internal procedures.
• Lead and support internal audits, external accreditation audits, regulatory audits, and customer assessments.
• Coordinate investigation, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and preventive actions related to audit findings and process nonconformities.
• Support development, review, implementation, and improvement of certification procedures, work instructions, templates, checklists, and operational processes.
• Monitor updates to standards, regulations, and certification scheme requirements and ensure effective communication and implementation within the certification team.
• Develop and deliver technical training, knowledge-sharing sessions, and competency development activities for certification engineers.
• Support qualification, authorization, and periodic competency monitoring of certification personnel, technical reviewers, auditors, and external resources.
• Monitor certification file quality through periodic reviews to ensure consistency and compliance with certification requirements.
• Coordinate with testing laboratories, inspection teams, overseas offices, regulators, customers, and other stakeholders to ensure effective execution of certification activities.
• Support customer escalations and provide technical clarification where required.
• Prepare management reports covering certification performance, workload, operational risks, resource requirements, KPIs, and improvement initiatives.
• Promote a culture of quality, accountability, continuous improvement, and operational excellence within the certification team.

Education: 

Bachelor s Degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or relevant engineering discipline

• Experience: 
• Minimum 7 10 years of experience in product certification, testing, inspection, regulatory compliance, quality assurance, or related technical field.
• Training or qualification in the following areas preferred: 
  • ISO/IEC 17065 Product Certification requirements 
  • ISO/IEC 17025 Laboratory Management System awareness Internal auditing 
  • Root cause analysis and corrective action management 
• Applicable IEC/product safety standards Regulatory certification schemes and conformity assessment requirements
• Experience in product certification activities including application review, technical evaluation, test report review, certification decisions, and surveillance activities.
• Experience coordinating technical teams, managing workload distribution, and monitoring operational performance.
• Experience supporting accreditation, regulatory, internal, and external audits.
• Strong knowledge of certification schemes, international standards, accreditation requirements, and conformity assessment principles.
• Ability to monitor KPIs, identify improvement opportunities, reduce turnaround time, and implement process improvements.
• Strong leadership, communication, problem-solving, planning, and stakeholder management skills.