Senior Release Manager

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

The Digital Client and Technology Solutions (DCTS) team is looking to add an experienced Release Manager (RM) to our growing team exclusively focused on DevEx best practices. To be successful in this role, you will need to understand how the role of a Release Manager has changed in organizations that are actively going through DevEx transformations.

The Senior Release Manager will be responsible for release planning, scheduling, forecasting and execution of software deployments. The role requires tight collaboration with different groups such as Engineering, Agile Practice, QE, DevOps and Operations Support.

The Release Manager will work closely with the Lead Engineers, DevOps Engineers, and Release Managers from different portfolios across Digital Solution organization to manage release inter-dependencies, conflicts, risks and release integration.

Main Accountabilities:

• Be accountable of the team’s coordination to be ready for the implementation day in production, ensuring diligent and efficient resolution of possible last minutes issues
• Develop common strategies for release governance across multiple departments and vendors to ensure there's a proper structure in place to allow DCTS teams to coordinate releases efficiently
• Identify gaps including any DevOps tools insufficiencies
• Track an enterprise-wide release calendar in partnership with change management
• Measure release cadence and effectiveness
• Create common standards and formats for release playbooks and work with operations to standardize release decision-making
• Define common mechanisms for rollback and standards for capturing release-related performance indicators
• Communicate with delivery leaders, test managers, engineering managers, and IT operations project and Agile Teams.
• The RM must have the confidence to manage up and provide reporting as well as meeting updates to senior IT management and line of business.
• Development of the Release Management Policy, Standards and processes as well as the integrated release schedules and plans.
• Produce Deployment, Run Books, Implementation Plans and Weekly Release Reporting
• Manage risks and resolves issues that affect release scope, schedule and quality
• Conduct/Engaged in Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews
• Govern and help coordinate integrated releases, the number of releases to production will increase as we roll out new technologies and tools
• Measure and monitor progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time, within budget and quality
• Work with DevOps Specialist to understand impacts of branches and code merges
• Continually work towards making improvements in the release process
• Assist engineering team to resolve the build and release issues.
• Coaching teams in effective use in ongoing adoption of build and deployment best practices.
• Assisting with prioritization and resolution of defects/bugs.
• Lead efforts to increase Release automation management.
• Create and manage build and deployment implementation/release plan and schedule.
• Work with other team members to secure and schedule resources.
• Support the application release from end to end to ensure releases are implemented on time and on budget.
• Assume overall responsibility for release package artifacts and delivery.
• Prepare status reports for management and stakeholders

Core Competencies:

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to liaise with internal and external stakeholders and adapt approach when dealing with technical and non-technical audiences
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a strong, collaborative multi-site team
• Excellent organizing, planning and time management skills
• Self-directed and proactive; thinking beyond the immediate problem with ability to analyze situations/problems systematically and deliver effective right-sized solutions in a timely manner
• Possess an inherent passion for continuous improvement and innovation
• Customer and results focused
• Flexible and adaptable with the ability to align to changing priorities

Qualifications / Skills:

• University Degree or College Diploma in a related discipline
• 7+ Experience as release manager in both waterfall and Agile/DevOps project lifecycles.
• Experience with automation tools and solutions for the release management function.
• Experience with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) best practices
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to balance potentially conflicting priorities, and to track and monitor numerous commitments and activities.
• Strong facilitation skills with experience in undertaking liaison and consultations with multiple stakeholders and interest groups.
• Experience in liaising with clients/stakeholders where client service was a key focus to responding to queries, issues & risk management.
• Has knowledge of product development and project life-cycle management
• Knowledge of ITIL standards and best practices
• Advanced written and verbal communication skills are a must
• As this position is posted in several locations, we specify that bilingualism (French, English, both oral and written) is required for Quebec only for the frequent interactions with English and French-speaking colleagues or internal partners across Canada or worldwide.

Assets:

• Knowledge of the health and wealth industries
• Agile experience
• Knowledge in scripting languages and tools such as Maven, Groovy, Jenkins, Bitbucket, Git, ANT, Docker, Ansible, WebLogic, Shell and Python
• Knowledge of web technologies (e.g. JavaScript, AJAX, HTML5 and CSS), related protocols and standards (e.g. HTTP, SSL, SQL, XML)

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.

We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you! Several work options are available and can be discussed throughout the selection process depending on the role requirements and individual needs.

We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary Range:

Job Category:

Posting End Date: