Director of Air Freight Control Tower - Engineering & Manufacturing

Job Title: Director of Air Freight Control Tower - Engineering & Manufacturing

Job Location: Peoria or Chicago, Illinois

Job Purpose

Lead the NORAM Air Freight Control Tower for Engineering & Manufacturing customers, ensuring consistent execution, visibility, and service quality across complex and time-critical supply chains. Direct regional governance, customer performance, escalations, operational improvement, and team development while aligning control tower delivery with global standards and commercial priorities.

Key Responsibilities

• Control Tower Leadership: Set the NORAM strategy, governance, operating standards, and capability roadmap for Engineering & Manufacturing air freight control towers.
• Service Execution: Ensure reliable end-to-end air freight execution, milestone visibility, exception management, and delivery performance for complex, production-critical shipments.
• Customer Governance: Lead performance reviews, customer health assessments, service-risk management, and improvement plans for strategic and multinational accounts.
• Escalations & Recovery: Direct major escalations, contingency plans, service recovery, and corrective actions across countries, stations, gateways, and partners.
• Operational Excellence: Convert performance gaps and recurring failures into measurable cross-functional improvement programs.
• Data & Digital Performance: Strengthen EDI quality, milestone compliance, dashboards, predictive risk indicators, and adoption of digital customer solutions.
• People Leadership: Lead and develop control tower leaders and senior Customer Program Managers through clear goals, coaching, accountability, and succession planning.
• Commercial Partnership: Support strategic RFQs, solution design, renewals, and growth opportunities by validating operational feasibility, capacity, and service commitments.
• Voice of Customer: Translate customer feedback and sector requirements into regional operational, product, and digital priorities.

Authority & Decision Making

• Set regional control tower priorities, governance standards, and performance expectations.
• Authorize escalation, recovery, alternate routing, capacity, and service-upgrade actions within approved guidelines.
• Assign ownership and corrective actions for customer, operational, and data-quality failures.
• Recommend investments, operating-model changes, and resource priorities through regional governance.

Key Interfaces

• Engineering & Manufacturing customers and global account teams
• DHL Air Freight Product, Stations, Gateways, Operations, and Control Towers
• Sales, Pricing, Solutions Design, Country Management, and Process Excellence
• Carriers, ground handling, trucking, security, and compliance partners

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• On‑time pickup, departure, arrival, and delivery performance
• Milestone and EDI timeliness, completeness, and accuracy
• Exception aging, recovery cycle time, and escalation closure
• Customer satisfaction, SQI performance, and corrective‑action effectiveness
• Reduction in repeat incidents, service failures, and operational cost leakage
• Team capability, retention, succession readiness, and control tower maturity

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Logistics, Supply Chain, Business, Operations, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive international air freight, control tower, customer operations, or supply chain experience.
• Demonstrated leadership of managers, senior professionals, and complex regional or multinational customer portfolios.
• Strong knowledge of air freight operations, gateways, carriers, capacity, customs interfaces, trucking, and exception management.
• Experience supporting Engineering & Manufacturing, automotive, industrial, or other production‑critical supply chains…