Senior Continuous Improvement Specialist
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 this, we’re embedding new ways of working that unlock value faster, lift performance and strengthen a culture of continuous improvement (CI).
Are you a self-starter with a passion for Lean, continuous improvement, and delivering real value? Do you thrive in complex environments, bring resilience to your work, and enjoy partnering across the business to lift performance?
We’re seeking a Senior Continuous Improvement Specialist based in Christchurch to join our Lean Chapter within the Delivery Enablement, Agile & Lean Centre of Excellence. This senior role plays a key part in embedding a strong culture of continuous improvement through our Full Potential / FOCUS programme.
About the role
As a trusted Lean practitioner, you will partner with Delivery Units, squads and leaders to improve process efficiency, customer experience and performance outcomes. You will coach and mentor others in Lean and CI practices, identify inefficiencies and value opportunities and drive sustainable improvement initiatives.
You’ll support performance uplift through process and digital enablement initiatives, while working hands-on at the Gemba. This role suits someone who is resilient, reliable and comfortable working autonomously while collaborating effectively across teams.
This role is based in Christchurch, with flexibility to travel within New Zealand and work varying shifts as required.
What you’ll be doing
- Partnering with teams and leaders to embed Lean, FOCUS and Continuous Improvement practices
- Coaching and mentoring others to build CI capability across the organisation
- Identifying and reducing waste, variation and inefficiency
- Supporting teams to design and implement sustainable process improvements
- Driving measurable improvement outcomes through hands-on Gemba-based work
- Contributing to digital and automation-enabled improvement initiatives
- Enabling alignment around improvement priorities and delivery roadmaps
What we are looking for
Strong CI credibility and experience, including:
- Deep Lean capability supported by formal certification (e.g. Lean Practitioner, Lean Leader, Lean Sensei or equivalent); Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt highly desirable
- 5+ years’ experience applying, coaching and deploying Lean / Six Sigma methodologies
- A relevant graduate-level qualification
- Proven delivery of measurable improvement outcomes at the Gemba, including leading cross-functional step-change and continuous improvement initiatives
- Strong skills in business case development, modelling, analysis, project management, change and facilitation
- Experience designing and implementing process improvements
- Exposure to process and digital improvement initiatives, ideally involving emerging technologies such as automation or Generative AI
- A consultative leadership style with the ability to influence without authority
Why join us
CI touches every part of our airline. This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact in an iconic New Zealand organisation, partnering across our business to help us be better than the day before for our people, customers and communities.
If this sounds like the next step in your Continuous Improvement career, we’d love to hear from you.
Applications close 11:59pm, Sunday 1 March 2026.
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."