Airfreight Operations Lead – Export Care & Efficiency

Kuehne+Nagel; Bensenville (IL); On-site; USD 75,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Kuehne+Nagel is seeking an experienced air export professional to supervise the Export Operational Care center and drive operational excellence in shipments and processes. The role emphasizes collaboration with pricing, sales, and customer service to ensure efficient airfreight execution.

Ideal candidates have 2–3 years of air export experience, familiarity with AEXUS, and strong documentation skills for bookings, licenses, and invoices.

Qualifications

• 2 to 3 years of air export experience.
• Freight forwarding or logistics experience.
• Familiarity with AEXUS.
• Experience with air export documentation, bookings, flight requests, pickups, and system updates.
• Experience with licensing, CGs, dangerous goods documentation, commercial invoices, and SLIs is helpful.

Responsibilities

• Supervise the Export Operational Care center team under their direct management.
• Ensure operational excellence through high-quality shipment/process management.
• Support the development of pricing strategies (liaise on pricing / RFQ preparation).
• Ensure close cooperation with National Airfreight Managers of the Customer Care teams and Systems & Processes teams for optimized operations.
• Actively manage interfaces and information / knowledge exchange between Kuehne+Nagel teams.
• Contribute as process owner to continuous improvements of processes and controls for lean and cost-efficient processes.
• Optimize proceedings to ensure development of Airfreight operational KPIs To ensure the highest levels of productivity within the organization.
• Support Airfreight procurement and carrier relationship management.
• Ensure a high level quality of export/import services.
• Closely collaborate with Sales on strategic accounts as needed.
• Closely collaborate with Customer Service to gain specialized customer specific knowledge and to receive first-hand feedback about operational execution.
• Support to develop new / existing customer targets.

Skills

Air export experience

Freight forwarding

Logistics operations

AEXUS familiarity

Documentation handling

Licensing & DG handling

Job description

Kuehne+Nagel is seeking an experienced air export professional to supervise the Export Operational Care center and drive operational excellence in shipments and processes. The role emphasizes collaboration with pricing, sales, and customer service to ensure efficient airfreight execution.

Ideal candidates have 2–3 years of air export experience, familiarity with AEXUS, and strong documentation skills for bookings, licenses, and invoices.