Chapter Lead Production Planning

Kia ora!

Ready to lead people, strengthen capability and shape the future of production planning at Air New Zealand?

We're looking for a Chapter Lead, Production Planning to lead and grow one of our key capability areas within Tech Ops. This is an opportunity to combine your technical expertise with people leadership, building a high performing chapter that enables our squads and delivery teams to deliver safe, efficient and reliable maintenance outcomes.

Working within our agile operating model, you'll be responsible for developing the capability, standards and ways of working for the Production Planning Chapter. You'll coach and support your people while partnering across Tribes, Squads and Delivery Units to ensure the right capability is deployed where it's needed most. Your leadership will help strengthen production planning, improve collaboration and build a future ready planning function.

The role you will play

• Lead, coach and develop the Production Planning Chapter, creating an environment where people can grow, collaborate and perform at their best
• Establish and continuously improve chapter standards, practices and ways of working that strengthen production planning capability across Tech Ops
• Partner with Delivery Units to deploy chapter capability, balancing operational priorities, capacity and individual development opportunities
• Provide technical leadership and trusted advice, supporting squads to optimise production planning, resource allocation and maintenance delivery
• Champion continuous improvement by using WIP, turnaround time, productivity and utilisation insights to identify risks, improve planning performance and support informed decision making.
• Build strong relationships across Maintenance Coordination, Workshops, Engineering and operational teams to remove barriers and improve end to end production outcomes
• Support business planning, budgeting and reforecasting by providing accurate production planning information while ensuring safety, quality and regulatory requirements are met.

What you'll bring

• Significant leadership experience in aviation, engineering, production planning or another complex operational environment
• Strong aircraft maintenance and production planning knowledge, with the credibility to provide technical leadership across the Production Planning Chapter
• Experience leading people in a cross functional, matrix or agile environment, balancing capability development with operational delivery
• A passion for coaching, mentoring and developing others, with a track record of building engaged, high performing teams
• Strong planning, analytical and commercial skills, with experience using production data to improve planning, forecasting and operational performance
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships across multiple teams and functions
• A continuous improvement mindset and the ability to embed new ways of working that strengthen capability and business performance.

If you bring most of this experience, along with transferable skills and the drive to grow, we'd love to hear from you.

What we can offer you
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, your friends and whānau
• FlexiLeave, giving you the option to purchase up to four additional weeks of leave each year
• A learning culture with opportunities to grow through meaningful experiences and on the job development
• Access to a wide range of wellbeing support, including our Wellbeing Hub, Employee Assistance Programme and Peer Support networks
• Great everyday savings through discounts on hotels, retail, banking, insurance, gyms and more. 

Sounds like you? Apply today!

This is a unique leadership opportunity to shape how Production Planning operates across Tech Ops while developing the people who make it happen. If you're ready to influence strategy, grow capability and help build the future of our agile engineering organisation, we'd love to hear from you.

Applications close Monday 31st August 2026.