Release Manager

Lead the end-to-end Release Management process as part of the Digital Storefront program, ensuring risk-managed product delivery, operational readiness, and adherence to enterprise policies. Drive transformation of release practices, build reporting, and partner across IT to enable reliable, repeatable delivery at appropriate service levels.

Position Responsibilities:

• Own and evolve Digital Storefront Release Management processes, aligning with enterprise standards and governance
• Create and manage end-to-end release plans: scheduling, coordination, dependency/risk management, and conflict-free implementation windows
• Conduct release/change planning and risk mitigation reviews; ensure observability, rollback, and incident response plans are in place
• Oversee operational readiness and quality gates; provide executive visibility into change risk posture
• Investigate ad-hoc issues, drive root cause analysis and remediation; develop collision avoidance strategies
• Provide SME guidance across Release Management, Test Environment, Development, QA, and support segments; enable agile and hybrid delivery cadences
• Protect organizational interests by identifying, escalating, and managing risks, dependencies, controls, and compliance requirements (e.g., DRP/BRP, audit, change management)
• Support production stability with 2nd/3rd line incident support, post-implementation reviews, and continuous improvement of processes and metrics

Governance & Communication

• Facilitate CAB meetings and release readiness reviews.
• Coordinate stakeholder sign-offs and deployment approvals.
• Own release communications before, during, and after deployment.
• Manage release risks, dependencies, conflicts, and escalation processes.
• Maintain audit-ready release documentation and deployment evidence.

Process Automation & Standardization

• Drive standardization of release processes across teams.
• Develop repeatable release templates, checklists, and governance frameworks.
• Identify opportunities to automate release readiness validation and deployment activities.
• Define and monitor Release KPIs, release success metrics, and change-failure rates.

Required Qualifications:

• 5-10 years of progressive experience in Release and Deployment Management within complex enterprise environments, ensuring seamless delivery of software releases while minimizing business and operational risks.

Release & Change Management

• Strong experience managing enterprise application releases across Development, QA, Staging, and Production environments.
• Deep knowledge of ITIL-based Change and Release Management processes.
• Hands-on experience with ServiceNow Change Management workflows, CAB coordination, risk assessments, approvals, and deployment governance.
• Proven ability to manage weekly release cadences, emergency hotfixes, rollback planning, and production deployment activities.
• Experience creating and maintaining release calendars, release communications, and deployment runbooks.

Tools & Platforms

• Advanced working knowledge of:
  • ServiceNow (Change and Release Management)
  • Jira (backlog, release tracking, reporting)
  • Confluence (documentation and governance)
  • GitHub (release readiness, branch management, pull request governance and merge coordination)
• Ability to track release scope across multiple teams and boards while maintaining a single source of truth.

Delivery & Methodology

• Strong understanding of Agile, Scrum, and Hybrid delivery methodologies.
• Knowledge of DevOps delivery principles, CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and deployment controls.
• Experience coordinating releases across multiple geographically distributed teams and stakeholders.
• Ability to balance BAU, defect, enhancement, and major-release deployment streams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Technical & Platform Knowledge
• Experience with:
  • Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Cloud Service
  • Adobe Cloud Manager deployment pipelines
  • Digital storefront or enterprise web platform releases
  • Cloud-based SaaS delivery models
• Automation & AI
• Experience implementing release automation using:
  • • GitHub Actions
    • CI/CD orchestration tools
    • Workflow automation platforms
• Knowledge of AI-assisted release management, including:
  • • Automated release-note generation
    • AI-driven risk assessment of deployments
    • Dependency and impact analysis
    • Automated testing insights and regression analysis
    • Predictive release health dashboards
• Quality & Testing
  • Understanding of QA governance and release testing strategies.
  • Experience with automated regression testing frameworks.
  • Familiarity with performance, security, and smoke-test validation processes.
• Reporting & Analytics
  • Ability to build dashboards using Power BI, Jira reporting, or ServiceNow reporting.
  • Track release velocity, deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, and change success rates.
• Leadership & Stakeholder Management
  • Experience working with global teams across North America, and Asia.
  • Ability to influence delivery teams without direct authority.
  • Experience managing executive-level release reporting and governance reviews.

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [email protected].

Working Arrangement