Senior Programme & Change Manager

Kia ora!

Air New Zealand is on an accelerated journey to deliver the best flying experience on Earth. Our purpose is to enrich our country by connecting New Zealanders to each other and New Zealand to the world. As part of our brand promise, we embrace Manaaki – taking care further than any other airline and creating meaningful experiences that empower and connect. 

We are seeking an experienced Senior Programme & Change Manager (internal title: Delivery Enablement Specialist) to join our Delivery Enablement team on a 6-month contract. 

This isn’t a traditional programme or change management role. We’re looking for a T-shaped professional who can span both worlds - someone equally comfortable structuring and leading delivery, while also shaping and embedding the change that makes delivery outcomes real and sustainable. 

You’ll bring proven expertise orchestrating large, complex programmes in fast-moving enterprise environments. You’ll thrive in ambiguity, driving clarity and momentum, and you’ll take a hands-on, “roll your sleeves up” approach, working side-by-side with squads and stakeholders to make sure outcomes are achieved, issues are unblocked, and progress sticks. 

You will champion and leverage our agile operating rhythm to deliver outcomes via large-scale cross-functional initiatives. This will require you to manage complex dependencies between teams, third parties, and across the organisation to ensure end-to-end delivery success.    

What you’ll do: 

• Drive delivery planning, value decomposition, and forecasting for a complex programme or initiative. By being an expert problem solver you will unblock constraints, leveraging the Air NZ enterprise agile delivery model to drive the outcomes.  

• Relentlessly manage the critical path, risks and issues, unblocking end to end delivery where required. 

• Develop and lead change strategies that align to programme objectives and delivery frameworks, grounded in early change planning activities such as impact assessments, stakeholder analysis, change readiness, and sequencing. 

• Design and deliver fit-for-purpose change activities, including communications, engagement sessions, training, workshops, and reinforcement plans that support the end-to-end change journey. 

• Actively manage change delivery, from planning through to execution, ensuring all activities land effectively, are contextually relevant, and respond to evolving stakeholder needs. 

• Partner with Tribe, DU, and business leaders to design squad structures and ways of working that optimise flow, minimise handoffs, and enable end-to-end delivery. 

• Provide integrated delivery and change plans, tracking both delivery health (time, cost, scope, dependencies) and change health (adoption, engagement, resistance). 

• Manage complex stakeholder environments, balancing senior leadership, frontline teams, unions, and vendors—with strong influencing and relationship-building skills. 

• Identify and resolve risks, issues, and resistance early; removing blockers to maintain delivery and adoption momentum. 

• Coach squads, leaders, and stakeholders in delivery excellence and change leadership, lifting capability across the enterprise. 

• Leverage Air New Zealand’s enterprise agile model, embedding iterative delivery, incremental benefit realisation, and transparency throughout. 

• Actively ensure the safety and security of all people, assets, systems & procedures in your area of responsibility. 

What you’ll bring: 

• Significant experience delivering complex programmes that span business, digital, and operational environments. 

• Deep expertise in change management, with proven ability to design and deliver strategies that land and sustain outcomes. 

• Comfort working in ambiguity or complexity - able to define structure, alignment, and clarity where the path forward isn’t obvious. 

• Strong facilitation, influencing and engagement skills that enable you to work with diverse stakeholder groups while managing expectations.  

• Active listener and clear communicator, enabling effective technical discussions to closure.  

• Strong stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, from C-suite through to frontline and union representatives - with a focus on value, risk and change. 

• A pragmatic, hands-on style, you can both design frameworks and roll up your sleeves to make sure things land. 

• Experience in aviation, transport, logistics, or other high-operational environments is an advantage. 

Why this role? 

This is a rare opportunity to lead both delivery and change across initiatives that truly shape Air New Zealand’s future. You’ll join a team that values collaboration, curiosity, and impact—and you’ll be empowered to bring clarity and momentum to some of the most complex and exciting work in the business. 

This role will close by 11:59pm, Sunday 5 October. 

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."