Project & Operations Professional

Dorian Liriano,
PMP

I lead projects and support operational transformations across airport and operations-control systems, working with cross-functional teams to deliver on time and under budget.

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Dorian Liriano, PMP, professional headshot

How I Approach Challenges

Challenges I've been asked to work through

  1. Frontline staff are stuck with a tool they've outgrown.

    Start with what the people using it actually need, then build. Adoption gets designed in, not announced at launch.

    Operational technology Atlanta: 30% average daily improvement in tasks performed

  2. The deadline is fixed, and the plan no longer fits it.

    A fixed date turns scope into a decision: what has to ship, what can follow, and saying so openly. Use what the last rollout taught you.

    Change leadership Detroit: schedule crashed by 90 days, deployed the week before Thanksgiving

  3. The technology that would fix it is unproven.

    Pilot it end to end, isolate the risk when it surfaces, and validate all the way to what users see.

    Data and cloud Fleet Desk: refresh latency from 15 minutes to 90–120 seconds, delivered a week early

  4. Several credible options, and no agreement on which.

    Narrow in stages, then put real operators in front of the real options. Operating scenarios beat vendor pitch decks.

    Vendor and commercial management OCC vendor RFP: 9 vendors to 3 finalists, a controller workshop, a clear business-user pick

  5. It touches a safety-relevant environment, so governance comes first.

    Plan the governance and procurement time instead of hoping it shrinks. Report status as it is, not as you'd like it to be.

    Executive stakeholder management OCC POC: about three months of governance and procurement, proof of concept live, validation still pending

Flagship Work

Selected Work

Detroit Airport Operations
Digital Transformation

Project Manager · Delta Air Lines · 2023
90 days ahead of schedule
Problem

Winter operations at Detroit was an unmovable operational deadline because deploying late risked severe cold-weather disruption across the hub.

Action

Applied lessons from Atlanta and crashed the delivery schedule by 90 days to beat the Thanksgiving freeze.

Result

Deployed a week before Thanksgiving 2023, and Detroit became the platform's strongest advocate station.

Smartsheet JIRA Teams Change Mgmt
Adaptability Schedule Compression Stakeholder Buy-In
Read the full case study →

From 15-Minute Lag to Near Real-Time Operations

Fleet Desk · Project Manager · Aer Lingus · 2026
7 days ahead of schedule, on a 60-day build
Problem

Fleet Desk had no real-time view into aircraft status because dashboards refreshed only every 15 minutes, and fixing it meant deploying unproven change-data-capture tooling.

Action

Led a cross-functional build piloting new change-data-capture technology to stream operational data through a cloud lakehouse into a live BI dashboard; resolved a replication clash with an isolated instance.

Result

Delivered Fleet Dashboard v1.0 one week early, driving refresh latency down from 15 minutes to 90–120 seconds, validated end-to-end to the live dashboard.

Change Data Capture Cloud Lakehouse BI Dashboards Streaming Data
Real-Time Data Cross-Functional Delivery Stakeholder Decisions
Read the full case study →

OCC Decision-Support
System Vendor RFP

Project Manager · Aer Lingus · 2025
9 vendors evaluated Sept–Dec 2025, narrowed to 3 finalists and one clear business-user pick
Problem

Aer Lingus's operations-control modernization programme needed a real-time decision-support tool, with four genuinely different paths on the table: buy, adapt, build, or incubate.

Action

Joined the initiative in September 2025 and ran the final stretch of a staged evaluation: 9 vendors narrowed to 3 on-site finalists, a live demo day, and a controller workshop.

Result

Clear business-user pick in December 2025, and leadership approval to proceed to a proof of concept.

RFP Matrix Scoring Models Governance Business Case
Vendor Evaluation Executive Business Case Program Leadership
Read the full case study →
Explore All 6 Case Studies → Discuss an Operational Challenge →

Selected Impact

Delivery at Scale

Measurable results from airline operations programs at Delta Air Lines and Aer Lingus.

Schedule
90 days Detroit delivered ahead of schedule Crashed the timeline to beat winter weather; Fleet Desk delivered 1 week early on a separate 60-day build.
Streaming Data
90–120s Live Operational Latency Reduced from a 15-minute delayed refresh to near real-time change-data-capture streaming into a live BI dashboard.
Recognition
$3M+ Chairman's Club Nomination (2022) Nominated for leading a cross-organizational project valued at $3M+, despite being new to the team (a separate recognition, not tied to a specific case study on this site).

Station Deployments

Multi-Hub Operational Footprint

ATL
Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Delta Air Lines

World's busiest passenger airport. Led a 2022 digital transformation across 4 frontline workgroups, including a rollout during Summer Heightened Awareness, then a separate 2024 Control Tower AWS migration.

DTW
Detroit Metropolitan Delta Air Lines

Critical severe-weather hub. Crashed the rollout schedule by 90 days to deploy prior to Thanksgiving freeze, establishing Detroit as the network's top software advocate station.

DUB
Dublin Airport Headquarters Aer Lingus

Operations Control Centre (OCC). Delivered a real-time streaming data pipeline for Fleet Desk 1 week early; joined the Decision Support RFP in September 2025 and ran the final stretch of the 9-vendor evaluation.

Governance & Buy-In

Cross-Functional Alignment Matrix

Operations & Fleet Desk

Frontline workgroup requirements, user acceptance testing, change adoption, and operational transition.

Enterprise IT & Architecture

AWS cloud migration, enterprise cybersecurity sign-offs, SSO integration, and network resilience.

Data & Platform Engineering

Change-data-capture pipelines, cloud lakehouse curation (bronze/silver/gold), and BI dashboard latency tuning.

External Vendor Partners

Contract SLA governance, multi-vendor RFP down-selection, co-development sprints, and dedicated test instances.

Executive Steering & PMO

CapEx business cases, board-level stakeholder briefings, budget management, and transparent amber/green RAG reporting.

Supply Chain & Legal

Procurement negotiations, vendor contracts, data sharing compliance, and resource planning.

Dorian Liriano seated, candid portrait

Introduction

About Me

I'm a PMP-certified Project Manager with 20+ years of technology and operational leadership experience, including 12+ years in commercial aviation across Delta Air Lines and Aer Lingus.

My career pairs a working grounding in enterprise IT, enough to follow networking and data conversations, with cross-functional operational delivery, translating complex frontline operational needs into software systems that operations controllers, station leads, and ramp crews have had a voice in building.

2025 – 2026
Aer Lingus · Technical Project Management

Operations Control Centre (OCC) modernization, real-time data pipelines, and decision-support systems.

2020 – 2025
Delta Air Lines · Project & Operations Management

Airport Operations digital transformation, AWS cloud migration, multi-station rollouts, and cross-functional program delivery ($3M+).

2013 – 2020
Delta Air Lines · Analytics, Process & Operations

Operational strategy, process engineering, capacity modeling, and cargo analytics leadership across network operations.

Pre-2013
Enterprise IT, Infrastructure & Support Foundation

10 years across infrastructure support, disaster recovery, systems administration, and end-user support from a help desk perspective before transitioning to aviation operations.

Community

Outside of work, I mentor local high school students building business plans for competition.

Ways of Working

AI-Enabled Delivery

I use AI as a delivery multiplier across research, analysis, documentation, planning, and decision preparation, and have every day since ChatGPT launched in December 2022.

Since 2022
Daily practice

Research, drafting, analysis, and decision prep, from the early ChatGPT days through today's agent and tool ecosystem.

Workflow
Capture to execution

Obsidian for thinking, OmniFocus for execution, connected to Claude through MCP so notes turn into tracked actions.

Built with AI
Shipped software products

Designed, built, and deployed with Claude, including this portfolio.

Exploring
Multi-agent orchestration

Using Claude Code with delegated subagents for research, build, and review, and learning to structure that work the way I'd structure a delivery team.

Recognition

Awards

Delta Platinum Award certificate, Safety category, awarded to Dorian Liriano

Safety: "We make the safety of our customers and each other our top priority."

Delta Gold Award certificate, Elevated category, awarded to Dorian Liriano

Elevated: "We strive to exceed expectations every time."

Delta Chairman's Club 2019 nomination for Dorian Liriano

Nominated for building a leadership library for the Cargo team from scratch and going above and beyond on capacity work.

Delta Chairman's Club 2022 nomination for Dorian Liriano

Nominated for leading a cross-organizational project valued at $3M+, despite being new to the team.

Feedback

What People Say

Thomas Kuhn headshot

Thomas Kuhn ↗

Technical Lead, North American Operations, INFORM GmbH

"Dorian's dedication, focus, and organizational skills make him the cornerstone of any project holding all the strings together. On top of that, he's a lot of fun to work with, where everyone feels included and he values every contribution highly."

Anis Toubaline headshot

Anis Toubaline ↗

Senior Analyst, Cargo Trucking Network Strategy

"During our time together on the Airport Strategy team, Dorian consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, navigating complex challenges while fostering a collaborative environment. His mentorship and attention to detail helped me grow personally and professionally."

Get in Touch

Let's Work Together

Work Authorization
US Citizen
Authorized in Ireland (EU Stamp 4 Permission · No sponsorship required)
Phone
US +1 917-715-9735
IE +353 087-489-7307
Location
Atlanta, Georgia (US)
Newtown, Kilmihil (IE)
Download this portfolio (PDF) ↓
Dorian Liriano portrait