Director, Digital Aviation Planning

Jeppesen ForeFlight is seeking a Director of Global Professional Services to lead the Digital Aviation Planning (DAP) delivery organization. This is a senior leadership role with global accountability for a team of implementation managers and consultants across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions, responsible for the successful delivery of Jeppesen ForeFlight's industry-leading DAP software portfolio including Manpower Planning, Crew Pairing, Crew Rostering, and Fatigue Risk Management solutions.

Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Professional Services, you will provide strategic and operational leadership to a geographically distributed organization, setting direction for how the DAP Professional Services team executes implementations, engages customers, and continuously improves delivery outcomes. You will lead through regional managers, holding them accountable to performance standards while coaching them to develop high-functioning, customer-focused teams.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience leading global professional services organizations in enterprise aviation or workforce management software, a thorough understanding of airline operational planning processes, and the executive presence to serve as a trusted partner to senior customer stakeholders and internal leadership alike. This role requires an individual who can operate at both strategic altitude and operational depth setting the vision while remaining close enough to the business to identify and resolve delivery risk before it impacts customers.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Global Team Leadership & Organizational Management

• Provide leadership, direction, and performance management to regional Professional Services managers across Americas, EMEA, and APAC, ensuring consistent delivery standards and a cohesive organizational culture across geographies.
• Set clear expectations for regional managers with respect to team performance, delivery quality, utilization targets, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.
• Lead workforce planning for the global DAP Professional Services organization, including capacity modeling, hiring decisions, skill gap analysis, and succession planning in partnership with HR and senior leadership.
• Foster a high-performance culture characterized by accountability, continuous improvement, customer-centricity, and cross-regional collaboration.
• Mentor and develop regional managers, providing structured coaching and career development support to build organizational depth and leadership capability.

Delivery Excellence & Operational Oversight

• Establish and maintain a rigorous operational framework for DAP implementations globally, including delivery methodology standards, project governance models, and quality assurance processes applicable across regions.
• Monitor global delivery performance through defined KPIs including on-time delivery, project margin, customer satisfaction, and resource utilization and drive corrective action where performance falls below target.
• Serve as the executive escalation point for critical delivery issues across the DAP portfolio, providing decisive leadership to resolve conflicts, manage risk, and protect the customer relationship.
• Ensure that implementation approaches for Manpower Planning, Crew Pairing, Crew Rostering, and Fatigue Risk Management are grounded in current product capabilities and aligned with Jeppesen ForeFlight best practices.
• Drive cross-regional knowledge sharing and standardization, reducing delivery variability and ensuring that lessons learned in one geography benefit the entire organization.

Customer & Executive Engagement

• Maintain executive sponsor relationships with strategically important airline and aviation customers, serving as a trusted senior point of contact and ensuring long-term customer health and satisfaction.
• Engage proactively with customer C-suite and VP-level stakeholders during key delivery milestones, business reviews, and escalations, representing Jeppesen ForeFlight with credibility and authority.
• Collaborate with Sales and Customer Success on strategic account planning, identifying expansion opportunities and ensuring that professional services engagements support broader account growth objectives.
• Champion the voice of the customer internally, surfacing trends in customer feedback and delivery experience to Product, Engineering, and executive leadership to drive continuous product and service improvement.

Strategy & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Develop and execute the multi-year strategy for the DAP Professional Services function, including investment priorities, organizational design, tooling, and delivery model evolution.
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering to provide a practitioner's perspective on product roadmap priorities, implementation complexity, and feature gaps that affect delivery outcomes.
• Collaborate with the Sales organization to ensure that pre-sales scoping and deal structuring for DAP engagements are accurate, commercially sound, and executable by the delivery team.
• Provide regular executive reporting on DAP Professional Services performance, pipeline, headcount, and strategic initiatives to the Senior Vice President of Professional Services and senior leadership.
• Represent Professional Services in cross-functional forums, contributing to company-wide decisions that affect delivery capacity, go-to-market strategy, or customer experience.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 12 or more years of progressive experience in professional services, implementation delivery, or consulting within enterprise software, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing managers and cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated experience leading a geographically distributed professional services organization across multiple regions, with accountability for global delivery performance and team development.
• Deep domain knowledge in airline or aviation operational planning, with direct experience in one or more of the following areas: crew management, manpower planning, fatigue risk management, or related workforce optimization disciplines.
• Proven ability to manage complex, multi-phase enterprise software implementations for large airline or aviation enterprise customers, including experience navigating regulatory and operational constraints inherent to the aviation industry.
• Strong people leadership skills with a track record of building high-performing teams, developing managerial talent, and sustaining organizational health across geographies and time zones.
• Executive presence and communication skills sufficient to represent Jeppesen ForeFlight credibly at the C-suite level, both internally and in customer-facing settings.
• Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities, resource constraints, and delivery risk across a large and diverse portfolio of simultaneous engagements.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Direct experience with Jeppesen DAP product suite or comparable airline crew management and planning solutions.
• Familiarity with aviation regulatory frameworks relevant to crew scheduling and fatigue risk management, including EASA, FAA, and CASA regulations.
• Experience leading professional services organizations through periods of significant growth, product transition, or organizational transformation.
• Prior experience in a customer-facing role such as developer, consultant, solution architect, or project manager that provides firsthand understanding of implementation delivery challenges.
• Proficiency with professional services management platforms (e.g., Rocketlane Salesforce, Certinia/FinancialForce, or similar PSA tools) and delivery reporting frameworks.

WHAT WE OFFER

• The opportunity to lead a global team at the forefront of aviation technology, delivering solutions that support safe and efficient operations for airlines worldwide.
• A senior leadership platform with significant organizational influence and direct visibility to executive leadership within Jeppesen ForeFlight.
• Competitive director/senior director-level compensation, comprehensive benefits, and performance-based incentive structures commensurate with global leadership responsibility.
• A culture that values operational excellence, cross-regional collaboration, and the professional development of every member of the team.