Kia ora!
Help shape a safer future for aviation.
As a Safety Specialist in Cabin Operations, you will play a critical role in protecting our people, customers and operation by strengthening safety systems, influencing better decision making, and driving continuous improvement across the airline. Your expertise will help ensure we continue to operate safely, meet regulatory obligations, and deliver world-class outcomes.
Working within our Safety team, you will partner with operational leaders and subject matter experts across the business to identify risks, investigate safety events, and strengthen a proactive safety culture. You will work in a cross-functional, agile operating environment, adapting priorities as operational risks and business needs change and bringing specialist safety expertise to support sound, risk-based decisions.
At Air New Zealand, we are committed to becoming the world's leading digital airline while maintaining the highest standards of operational excellence. Your work will make a genuine impact across one of New Zealand's most iconic organisations.
How you'll make an impact
- Lead and support complex operational and flight safety investigations, working credibly with operational specialists while maintaining appropriate independence, objectivity and evidence-based analysis
- Analyse operational safety events through a systems-based, learning-focused and Just Culture lens, understanding how and why events made sense in their operational context, including human, organisational and system factors. Translate investigation findings into organisational learning and effective risk controls that reduce future risk
- Deliver expert advice, education, and safety systems training that enable informed, risk-based decision making across the business
- Monitor regulatory changes, industry trends, and organisational developments to ensure ongoing compliance and continuous improvement
- Build strong relationships across the business and with external aviation stakeholders, contributing specialist safety expertise to identify, manage, and mitigate operational hazards
- Prepare high-quality reports, presentations, and safety analysis that support business decisions and drive meaningful safety outcomes
- Champion continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to enhance safety processes, systems, organisational capability, and learning.
What we're looking for
- Relevant experience or transferable capability in aviation, safety, risk management, or other complex operational environments.
- Safety Investigator qualification - highly desirable
- Qualified Auditor qualification - desirable
- Strong experience working within Safety Management Systems, particularly hazard identification, risk management, investigation and reporting, and auditing
- Proven capability investigating operational and flight safety events using recognised methodologies, including human and organisational factors analysis
- Experience translating investigation findings into practical recommendations and effective risk controls that support organisational learning
- Strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence leaders, work collaboratively across teams, and build credibility through evidence-based advice
- The ability to interpret regulatory requirements and translate them into effective operational practices
- A collaborative mindset, sound judgement, adaptability, and a passion for continuous improvement, learning, and operational excellence.
If you bring most of this experience, along with transferable skills, different perspectives and a drive to grow, we'd love to hear from you. We value the lived experiences and ways of thinking that people bring to safety work and believe they strengthen our ability to see risk from different angles.
Why join Air New Zealand?
We want our people to live their best lives and access great benefits that support their lives outside work.
- Generous staff travel benefits for you, and opportunities to share travel privileges with friends and family
- FlexiLeave, giving you the option to purchase up to four additional weeks of leave each year
- A learning culture with development opportunities, on-the-job learning, and experiences that help you grow your career
- Access to wellbeing support, including our Wellbeing Hub, Employee Assistance Programme, and Peer Support networks
- Discounts on hotels, retail, banking, insurance, gyms, and more through our work perks programme.
Ready for take-off?
If you are passionate about improving aviation safety, influencing positive change, and making a lasting impact across a complex operational environment, we'd love to hear from you. Bring your expertise, curiosity, and commitment to learning and excellence, and help shape the future of safe operations at Air New Zealand.
Applications close Sunday, 6th September
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.
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."
