Roland Barnes is Senior Director of Quality at Pratt & Whitney, a business of Raytheon Technologies. In this role, Roland leads the organization responsible for driving supplier quality performance across the P&W global supply chain. He is responsible for the enterprise quality strategy for driving "right first time" quality on product and process changes and transitions, driving a risk based surveillance strategy to maintain the health of the supply chain and deploying a robust continuous improvement framework. In addition, sustainment of customers’ and regulators’ confidence in Pratt & Whitney’s supreme commitment to quality.

He joined Pratt & Whitney in 2002 as a Structural Engineer, where he supported various programs ranging from concept to build and test, to active fleet with millions of flight hours. Since then, he has held numerous technical and leadership roles of increasing responsibility. After progressing through leadership roles in Engineering, he chose to broaden his experience by taking a leadership role within the Quality discipline. In this role, he had leadership responsibility for various sites across the US, leading salary and hourly teams across multiple quality functions. Prior to joining Pratt& Whitney, he spent two years at NAWC WD (Naval Air Warfare Center - Weapons Division) in China Lake, California, as an early career Structural Engineer.

As a Georgia native, Roland was raised outside of Stone Mountain and from a young age quickly gained a fascination of the physics behind flight. He was the first of his family to attend college and in 1999 earned his bachelor of science in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech. A passion for continued learning brought him back to Georgia Tech to secure his master of science in Aerospace Engineering in the spring of 2002. He holds various patents, enabling new technological advancements such as higher efficiency compressors.