Kia ora!
After recently being voted as New Zealand's most attractive employer, Air New Zealand is continually capturing the world's attention for its great culture, outstanding customer service and innovations that are truly cutting edge. Grow your passion & reach your full potential, with the support of our whānau!
We’re looking for a visionary Design Innovation Lead (Senior Brand and Marketing Specialist) with a strong foundation in graphic design to join our inhouse creative, design and content studio team. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of our airline’s brand through strategic leadership, creative excellence, and cross-functional collaboration.
This is a fixed term opportunity until July 2026.
As Design Innovation Lead, you’ll define and lead the airline’s brand design strategy, ensuring it aligns with business goals and customer expectations. As a key advocate for design at the senior leadership level, you’ll champion a culture of creativity, experimentation, and human-centered thinking.
You’ll lead a talented in-house design team with mentoring, developing, and inspiring them to deliver world-class creative work. You’ll oversee the execution of major brand design initiatives, ensuring consistency and excellence across all touchpoints.
You’ll also be responsible for evolving our Masterbrand identity, maintaining brand standards, and guiding external partners to deliver aligned creative outputs. Collaboration is key - you’ll work closely with marketing, digital, operations, and product teams to ensure design supports strategic priorities.
Finally, you’ll drive innovation and continuous improvement across design processes, tools, and workflows, while managing vendor relationships and resource planning.
We’re looking for someone who thrives in a collaborative, fast-paced environment, is aligned with our values, and has a proven track record of delivering high-impact creative work at scale.
Our ideal candidate:
- You bring deep hands-on experience in graphic design, with a strong portfolio demonstrating creative excellence across print and digital channels
- You have proven experience in brand leadership and creative direction
- Strong team leadership and mentoring capabilities
- You're a strategic thinker with a design-thinking mindset
- Excellent collaboration and stakeholder engagement skills
- Passion for innovation, storytelling, and continuous improvement
- Experience managing budgets, vendors, and cross-functional projects
- You have the ability to advocate for design at the executive level
- Experience leading a design team for a large corporate is a bonus, but not a must.
Ready to shape the future of our brand? Apply now and bring your creative leadership to a team that’s redefining the airline experience.
Applications close on 08/06/2025.
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."
