Delivery & Performance Specialist – Performance Optimisation

Air New Zealand; Auckland; On-site; NZD 100,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Air New Zealand is seeking an experienced Delivery & Performance Specialist to join its Performance Optimisation squad for a 12-month fixed-term contract. You will diagnose delivery constraints, design targeted interventions, and partner with Product Owners and squads to drive measurable improvements in flow and value.

You will apply systems thinking, coaching and data-informed approaches to turn strategy into practical outcomes, strengthening the airline’s operating model across Units and teams.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated systems thinking ability to diagnose delivery or organisational performance issues.
• Strong coaching and facilitation capability to improve flow and predictability.
• Experience using metrics and qualitative insights to form hypotheses and guide decisions.
• Practical knowledge of agile, lean, delivery models and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Identify opportunities to improve delivery performance using data and context from units and squads.
• Diagnose root causes of performance constraints and design time-bound interventions.
• Deliver coaching and facilitation to enable new ways of working.
• Collaborate with Product Owners and Delivery Owners to determine where support is needed.
• Measure impact of interventions using delivery, flow and qualitative signals.
• Create reusable playbooks, tools and guidance from successful interventions.
• Support adoption and capability building across teams.

Skills

Systems thinking

Coaching

Data analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Agile delivery

Change enablement

Stakeholder management

Written communication

Job description

Delivery & Performance Specialist – Performance Optimisation

Help shape the future of how Air New Zealand delivers for our customers, our people and Aotearoa. This is your opportunity to turn strategy into meaningful outcomes, influence enterprise-wide transformation, and build the capability that keeps one of New Zealand's most iconic organisations moving forward. Whether your experience comes from digital, operations, or large-scale transformation, we value fresh perspectives and the ability to create lasting impact.

To support this vision, we are seeking an experienced Delivery & Performance Specialist to join our Delivery & Performance team. This is a 12-month fixed term contract.

You’ll join our Performance Optimisation squad, helping Air New Zealand identify and address the delivery constraints that have the greatest impact on performance. Working across Units and squads, you’ll combine performance data, practical delivery expertise and coaching to diagnose opportunities, design focused interventions and measure whether they make a difference.

Rather than providing permanent embedded support in Units, you’ll work where evidence and business context indicate that targeted intervention can unlock the most value. You’ll help turn what we learn into reusable practices, tools and insights that strengthen delivery performance across Air New Zealand.

As a Delivery & Performance Specialist, you will:

• Use delivery and performance signals to identify opportunities for improvement, combining quantitative data with context from Units, squads, leaders and Delivery & Performance Specialists.
• Diagnose the underlying causes of performance constraints, looking beyond symptoms to understand issues affecting flow, predictability, dependencies, prioritisation, team effectiveness and speed to value.
• Design and deliver focused, time-bound interventions with Units and squads, using coaching, facilitation, structured problem solving and practical changes to ways of working.
• Partner with Product Owners, Delivery Owners, Tribe Digital Leads, Unit leaders and other Delivery & Performance Specialists to agree where support is required and ensure ownership remains with the teams accountable for outcomes.
• Measure the impact of interventions using delivery, flow, adoption and qualitative signals, distinguishing activity completed from performance improvement achieved.
• Turn successful interventions and recurring patterns into reusable playbooks, tools, guidance and scalable ways of working, helping improvements extend beyond the teams directly supported.
• Help develop and improve performance telemetry and insight, ensuring measures are trusted, interpreted in context and used to trigger meaningful conversations and action.
• Strengthen Air New Zealand’s operating model by identifying systemic friction, testing improvements and feeding evidence and learning back into enterprise ways of working.
• Support the adoption and sustainability of improvements through appropriate stakeholder engagement, change enablement and capability building.

Success in this role will be measured by measurable improvement in delivery performance within the areas supported, stronger delivery predictability and flow, reduced delivery friction, and clear evidence about which interventions work. You’ll also help create reusable approaches that allow successful improvements to be applied more broadly without creating ongoing dependency on the Operating Model Performance Tribe.

What we’re looking for

• Demonstrated systems thinking ability to diagnose delivery or organisational performance issues, separating symptoms from underlying constraints and identifying practical improvement opportunities.
• Strong coaching and facilitation capability, with experience helping teams and leaders improve flow, prioritisation, predictability, accountability and ways of working.
• Confidence working with delivery and performance data, using metrics and qualitative insights to form hypotheses, guide conversations and assess whether interventions have made a difference.
• Practical knowledge of agile, lean, delivery models, systems thinking, flow and continuous improvement, with the judgement to adapt approaches rather than apply frameworks mechanically.
• Experience designing and facilitating targeted interventions, experiments or improvement activity, including establishing baselines, intended outcomes and measures of success.
• Ability to work across organisational boundaries and influence Product Owners, Delivery Owners, leaders, specialists and multidisciplinary teams without relying on positional authority.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and change capability, able to co‑create improvements with affected teams and support changes through to sustained adoption.
• Ability to turn recurring problems and successful interventions into simple, reusable practices, playbooks, tools or guidance. A high degree of competency in written communication is critical.
• Experience in complex operational environments is advantageous, with relevant agile, coaching, delivery, change or continuous‑improvement certifications also considered an advantage.

If you meet the majority of the criteria and are excited by the opportunity, we’d love to hear from you.

Ready for take‑off?

If you’re passionate about enterprise transformation and enjoy turning complexity into practical outcomes, we’d love to hear from you. Join Air New Zealand and help shape the future of how we deliver for our customers, our people and New Zealand.

Please note, while we will deliver an outcome to all applications, due to high recruitment volumes we will only organise conversations with shortlisted candidates.

Applications close Thursday 22nd October 2026.

Additional Information

At Air New Zealand, we are proudly committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and believe in creating a truly inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves and thrive. Our people are our greatest asset – because while everything else we do in our operation can be replicated by our competitors, it is our people that truly set us apart. We are firm believers in celebrating the differences and diversity of thought our people bring to their roles. We encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds, including those with a disability, additional health and mental health needs, and/or are neurodiverse to apply for our roles.

If you have encountered any accessibility barriers and require further information or reasonable accommodations to our recruitment process, please reach out to the recruiter listed on this job advert so they are able to support you to freely participate equitably in our recruitment and selection process.

Whāia te pae tawhiti kia tata. Ko te pae tata whakamaua, kia tina.

"Seek to bring distant horizons closer. Once near, seize them and make them your reality."