Director, Customer Experience & Integration

Director, Customer Experience & Integration

About the Organization:

Nieuport Aviation owns and operates the passenger terminal at the award-winning Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport (YTZ). Backed by significant international expertise in managing aviation infrastructure, we are committed to world-class customer service for the airport’s passengers.

Nieuport is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Nieuport is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.

We encourage applications from qualified candidates and will work to reasonably accommodate applicants’ accessibility needs throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process: [email protected].

About the Role:

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Director of Customer Experience & Integration is accountable for defining, governing, and continuously enhancing the end-to-end passenger experience at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The role establishes Nieuport’s customer experience vision and performance standards, aligns internal and external delivery partners to those standards, and provides executive and Board-level reporting on service performance, operational readiness, and passenger outcomes.

With enterprise-wide accountability for the passenger journey across the terminal and shuttle bus ecosystem, the Director oversees all touchpoints, including check-in, security, customs, boarding, baggage, transportation, retail, food and beverage, lounges, terminal comfort, and destination experience. The role also leads passenger flow and concept-of-operations strategies for terminal changes, champions the passenger perspective in design and construction decisions, defines the business value of the terminal experience, and governs readiness and opening activities for new facilities, processes, and service models.

Key Responsibilities:

Experience and Service Level Standards

• Define, steward, and evolve the Nieuport Terminal Experience Standard, including maximum wait times, comfort wait times, and green, yellow, and red performance bands for each passenger processor.
• Set the enterprise service architecture for check-in, screening, customs and border processing, boarding, baggage delivery, connections, walking distances and times within the terminal, bussing to remote stands, and aircraft hold times.
• Govern passenger-flow, circulation, dwell-space, and seating principles across the terminal, ensuring layout and furniture decisions continue to support demand, schedule changes, and the required passenger experience.
• Shape the experience framework for the retail, food and beverage, and lounge environment, including layout and adjacency, queueing, seating, service hours against schedule, cleanliness, condition, and delivery performance. Commercial holds the business relationship with concessionaires and lounge operators.
• Steward the physical and sensory environment of the terminal, including lighting, acoustics, temperature, cleanliness, ambiance, and alignment to the Nieuport brand experience.
• Ensure accessibility is embedded in the passenger journey, with requirements translated into terminal design, operating processes, partner delivery, and performance monitoring.
• Serve as executive sponsor for terminal wayfinding, ambiance, accessibility, queue management, and service recovery, ensuring these priorities are integrated into operations, capital planning, partner delivery, and performance governance.
• Define the passenger-experience framework for disruption and irregular operations, including passenger information, wayfinding, queue management, and service recovery, and align delivery with Terminal and Apron Operations, which hold the operational response.
• Align standards to IATA Level of Service, ASQ results, and Nieuport brand attributes, and refresh them as schedule, fleet, facility, and passenger-demand conditions change.
• Govern the annual compliance and reporting cycle for the Standard, including audit against each element, performance reporting, executive review, and reissue.

Operational Government and Partner Relations

• Steward operational and strategic relationships with CATSA, CBSA, and US Customs and Border Protection, ensuring agency engagement supports passenger outcomes, operational resilience, and Nieuport’s service expectations.
• Negotiate and align agency expectations for lane opening times, resourcing against demand, processing-time visibility, and queue configuration.
• Oversee lane-opening performance, queue lengths, and processing times, ensuring exceptions are reported, escalated, and resolved when performance falls outside agreed levels.
• Ensure government processes are legible, navigable, and integrated into the passenger journey with minimal need for intervention or assistance.
• Align with airlines on the end-to-end passenger experience, including check-in and gate resourcing, hours against schedule, boarding process and boarding time, baggage delivery, aircraft hold times, connection and transfer handling, disruption and irregular operations communication and recovery, and lounge access where airline operated.
• Lead partner performance management for ground handlers, lounge operators, cleaning contractors, and front-line service providers, including service reviews, performance intervention, and remediation.
• Set and govern the shuttle bus passenger-experience requirements, including service standards, vehicle cleanliness, operator conduct, service reliability, and integration with terminal operations.
• Chair terminal service governance forums with delivery partners to review performance, resolve cross-functional issues, and align improvement actions.
• Coordinate with Toronto Port Authority where terminal activity and passenger experience intersect with their operational areas, including the tunnel, landside terminal, and terminal approach, to protect service continuity and passenger experience.
• Integrate vendor performance for cleaning, customer service, and front-line passenger support into the broader partner performance framework for terminal experience.

Terminal Development

• Direct the concept of operations and passenger-flow strategy for terminal change, expansion, and renewal, including functional requirements, processor sizing, circulation, and passenger movement.
• Define and govern the experience and design requirements applied to terminal development projects.
• Represent the passenger in design decisions, review concepts and drawings against the experience standard, and protect that standard through value engineering, phasing, and delivery trade-offs.
• Own the passenger-experience mitigation strategy for each construction phase, including the service levels to be maintained while the terminal is in construction and the controls required to protect passenger flow, queueing, wayfinding, accessibility, and comfort.
• Lead Operational Readiness, Activation, and Transition for new facilities and processes, including readiness criteria, trials, familiarization, partner training, go-live governance, and transition-to-operation controls.
• Govern the opening of new facilities and processes, confirming readiness, passenger experience, operating performance, and benefits realization before project closeout.
• Shape capital business cases with passenger-experience, capacity, and service-level analysis, including the west apron, remote stands, and processor expansion.
• Develop and maintain an economic assessment framework for measuring the value of the premium passenger experience

Airport Service Quality

• Own ASQ performance strategy, category analysis, target setting, and the annual ASQ improvement plan.
• Chair the ASQ governance forum across Operations, Commercial, Communications, and partners, driving improvement actions to completion and escalating barriers to executive resolution where required.
• Own passenger complaint governance, root-cause analysis, and service recovery, ensuring complaint themes are translated into operational, partner, design, and communication improvements.
• Direct passenger insight activities, including surveys, observational studies, journey mapping, and public engagement, to inform planning studies and terminal experience improvements.
• Translate the destination strategy into the terminal environment and steward Nieuport brand attributes through the passenger journey.

Integration and Reporting

• Chair the terminal experience governance forum across the Operations director team, aligning safety, security, apron, facilities, technology, and planning activity to a single experience standard.
• Embed experience requirements into operational plans, capital plans, procurement documents, partner contracts, and governance controls.
• Own the experience KPI framework, performance reporting, and management cadence, ensuring measures align with organizational service goals and drive partner accountability.
• Lead preparation of Board and Executive materials on experience performance, service levels, ASQ results, terminal readiness, and improvement progress, supporting the Chief Operating Officer with clear messaging on terminal experience and terminal development.

Leadership Expectations

This role is expected to operate as an enterprise leader, influencing across functions and partners without relying solely on direct authority. The Director brings strategic judgment, executive communication, disciplined performance governance, and the ability to translate passenger-experience objectives into operating standards, capital requirements, commercial expectations, and partner commitments.

Qualifications

Education & Certifications

• Post secondary degree or diploma in business administration, planning, aviation management, design, hospitality, or related field (or an equivalent combination of education, training and experience)

Experience & Skills

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in operations, planning, customer experience, aviation, transportation, hospitality, or large-scale service environments, including senior accountability for cross-functional service outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience defining service-level standards, performance frameworks, governance routines, and partner accountability mechanisms across complex operating environments.
• Experience leading development of concepts of operations and passenger flow for terminal or facility change.
• Experience in terminal or facility development, including design review, construction phase operations and facility opening. ORAT experience is an asset.
• Experience managing relationships with government agencies, regulators and contracted service providers.
• Experience specifying or implementing passenger processing or customer facing technology, from requirement through to operation.
• Ability to interpret queueing and capacity data, level of service methodology and survey results.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence senior stakeholders, and deliver results through governance, partnership, and disciplined follow-through without relying solely on direct authority.
• Experience preparing clear, decision-ready materials for executive, Board, government, and partner audiences.
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills in fast-paced environments.
• Knowledge of airport regulations, accessibility requirements and passenger service standards.
• Ability to identify, sponsor, and implement passenger-experience innovations that improve service performance, resilience, accessibility, and commercial value.
• Must meet the security level designated for the position, and obtain and retain a Transportation Security Clearance.

What we are offering:

• Competitive salary plus bonus, dependent on meeting annual goals.
• Nieuport Aviation is officially certified as a Living Wage employer by the Ontario Living Wage Network (OLWN)
• RRSP matching (after three months' probation period).
• Robust medical, dental, and life benefits.
• Public transportation or parking allowance.
• An opportunity to surround yourself with a group of dynamic professionals who are all working towards elevating the experience for the millions of travelers choosing to use Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, located just steps from the City of Toronto’s downtown area.
• A role in an exciting industry!