In medical devices, Quality and Regulatory are not support functions. They are the difference between a product that reaches the market and one that does not. Yet QA and RA hiring is too often treated as an afterthought — until an audit or a submission deadline turns it into an emergency. By then the strongest people are already placed elsewhere.

Mistake one: hiring too junior to save budget

A QA Manager who has never owned a regulatory submission is cheaper. They are also a risk you feel at the worst possible moment. Under MDR, the cost of a weak quality system is measured in delayed approvals and lost market access, not in salary. The saving on the hire is tiny next to the price of getting it wrong. Senior quality people pay for themselves the first time they catch something before a notified body does.

Mistake two: writing the advert for the wrong person

Many QA and RA adverts read like a compliance checklist — a wall of standards and acronyms with no sense of the actual role. The best candidates are not motivated by a list of regulations they already know. They want to know what they will own, what the product is, and whether the company treats quality as a partner or a blocker. An advert that signals the latter filters out exactly the people you want.

Mistake three: a slow process for a fast market

  • Good QA and RA professionals are in short supply and high demand.
  • They are usually in stable, well-paid roles and not desperate to move.
  • A three-week gap between interviews is all it takes to lose them.

When the talent pool is small, speed is not a luxury. It is the whole game. The firms that hire well in this space decide quickly because they have decided in advance what good looks like.

Treat quality as a discipline, not a cost

The companies that struggle to hire QA and RA people are usually the ones that view the function as overhead. Candidates can sense it in the brief, the questions and the pace. The companies that win these hires talk about quality as something they invest in — and they back it with a process that respects the candidate's time. The hiring experience is the first proof of the culture you are describing.