Job Description

Release Manager

Status:

Full Time

Hours:

Monday - Friday, 35 hours/week

Home Campus:

Fennell (hybrid work arrangements available)

Rate of Pay:

Payband 10 ($87,239 - $109,049 per year)

Posting Date:

May 20th, 2025

Closing Date:

June 2nd, 2025 at 7:00 pm EST


We believe the rich diversity among our students and the communities we serve should be reflected within our workforce. As educators, we believe it is important to act and show leadership in advancing the principles of reconciliation, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our community.

Job Summary

Reporting to the Manager, IT Portfolio Management, the incumbent serves as the Release Manager who will be responsible for leading release activities, maintaining the health of test environments, designing and implementing a release calendar, and will partner closely with the business to provide IT support for business critical BAU (Business as Usual) processes.


In leading IT release coordination activities, the Release Manager proactively liaises with vendors to identify necessary upgrades and patches, establishes clear timelines, and rallies technical resources to execute releases. They champion rigorous testing activities, coordinate IT outage notices with precision, and adhere to Mohawk's Technical Change Management framework by efficiently submitting Change Requests. Their role as a communicator is pivotal in keeping all stakeholders informed of deployment progress. The successful candidate will need to ensure that both IT and business adheres to this framework to reduce risk to the organization, all while looking for opportunities to continuously improve the process.


The Release Manager forges strong partnerships with business leads, providing IT support for business-critical processes. By engaging and aligning technical resources with business timelines, they drive successful outcomes. Their strategic coordination of IT outage notices and commitment to the Change Management framework ensures the stability and reliability of our systems. Throughout deployments, their clear communication keeps relevant stakeholders updated and aligned.


The Release Manager takes ownership of the entire test environment framework, driving the review and coordination of environment requests to ensure seamless integration. They manage the submission and handling of Request for Changes (RFCs), while maintaining up-to-date reference documentation to ensure a smooth process.


Additionally, the incumbent will be responsible for creating and maintaining a comprehensive release calendar, ensuring that all releases are planned and scheduled effectively to avoid conflicts and ensure timely delivery.

What you'll be doing:

Leading IT Releases, Upgrades, and Deployments

Liaises with vendor(s) to determine upgrades/patches required and on what timelines . Engages with technical resources as required. Coordinates end user testing. Ensures test environments are ready as per the schedule. Coordinates IT outage notices. Submits Change Requests and adheres to Mohawk's Change Management framework. Communicates progress during deployments. Manage the entire release process/lifecycle from planning through deployment, ensuring each stage is well-executed and meets quality standards. Ensure that proper version control and documentation are maintained throughout the release lifecycle. Design and implement deployment strategies, including rollouts, patches, and system upgrades, to minimize disruptions and downtime. Implement failover and rollback procedures to ensure quick recovery in case of deployment failure. Serve as the primary point of contact between development, QA, business, and operations teams during the release process. Verify that all prerequisites (e.g., system configurations, software dependencies, security updates) are completed prior to release. Maintain comprehensive release documentation, including release notes, deployment instructions, and post-release validation reports. Document any issues encountered during the release process, along with their resolutions, for future reference. Conduct post-release monitoring and validation to confirm the successful deployment of upgrades or new software releases. Track and resolve any issues that arise during or after the deployment process, ensuring minimal impact on users. Continuously review and optimize release processes and tools, implementing best practices for more efficient and reliable deployments. Gather feedback from stakeholders post-release to identify areas for process improvement and address recurring challenges. Identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with releases, such as potential conflicts with existing systems or critical downtimes. Implement risk management strategies, such as staggered releases, staging environments, and backup systems. Ensure releases comply with internal and external standards, security requirements, and regulatory frameworks. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to release success (e.g., deployment success rate, number of incidents post-deployment). Prepare and present release metrics and performance reports to senior management and other stakeholders.

Supporting Business-Driven Processes

Translate business requirements and objectives into actionable release plans that address both technical and business needs. Plan releases in a way that minimizes disruption to critical business processes, ensuring that essential business operations continue without interruption during deployment. Prioritize releases based on business impact, ensuring the most critical updates and fixes are delivered first. Conduct impact assessments to evaluate how proposed releases will affect business operations, users, and other systems. Work with business stakeholders to assess potential risks, dependencies, and business process changes resulting from the release. Balance release timelines with business urgency, ensuring that critical business needs are addressed in a timely manner. Support the technical change management process (CAB) by collaborating with business teams to assess, approve, and track changes that impact business operations. Ensure that changes are communicated effectively to all relevant business units and that they understand how releases will affect their business operations or processes. Work with QA Lead and business users to define and execute User Acceptance Testing (UAT), ensuring that new features or updates meet business expectations and requirements. Capture and document business requirements, expectations, and success criteria for each release, ensuring that these are clearly reflected in release plans and schedules. Ensure that release documentation addresses both business and technical aspects, providing transparency to all stakeholders involved. Provide regular status updates and post-release reports to business stakeholders, keeping them informed on the progress of releases, any issues encountered, and their resolution. Ensure that stakeholders understand how each release supports business outcomes and address any concerns or adjustments as needed. Identify opportunities for process improvements and automation within the release process that can better support business operations. Work with business stakeholders to gather insights and feedback, using this information to streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies, and enhance the overall business impact of releases. When issues arise post-release, work closely with business units to resolve critical problems, ensuring that business-critical systems are restored quickly and efficiently. Lead the resolution of production incidents that impact College business operations, ensuring timely communication with business stakeholders and minimizing downtime.

Environment Management

Reviews environment requests for both production and non-production. Coordinates with requestors as needed. Responsible for ensuring that ad-hoc requests are in line with release schedule and proactively looks to reduce risk to the organization by avoiding collisions. Submits Change Requests and adhere to Mohawk's Change Management framework. Maintains any associated reference documentation. Ensure that appropriate test environments are set up and configured to replicate production environments, enabling accurate testing of new releases and updates. Coordinate with infrastructure and development teams to ensure test environments are correctly provisioned and aligned with the specific requirements of each release. Work closely with development and QA teams to understand testing requirements for each release and ensure the availability of suitable environments for different types of testing (e.g., unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing). Prioritize and schedule the setup of test environments based on release timelines and testing dependencies. Ensure that test environments are available and stable for testing activities, minimizing downtime or environmental issues that could delay the release cycle. Monitor test environment health and performance, addressing any issues that might impact the ability of teams to run tests effectively. Work with teams to manage and maintain test data, ensuring that relevant data sets are available for testing without exposing sensitive or production data. Establish processes for refreshing, anonymizing, and restoring test data as required by testing cycles. Ensure consistency between test environments and production environments by managing configuration management and environment replication strategies. Ensure that environment changes (e.g., infrastructure updates, software versions) are consistently applied across all relevant test environments. Maintain a secure environment by ensuring that sensitive information in test environments is properly protected and managed. Provide regular reports to management on the status of test environments, including availability, performance, and resource allocation. Ensure that any changes to infrastructure or configuration in the test environment are coordinated and communicated effectively. Ensure that test environments are configured to meet the requirements of different testing stages, such as integration, system, or performance testing, based on the needs of each release cycle. Maintain version control over environment configurations to ensure that they align with specific software and hardware configurations required for different test cycles. Ensure that the documentation is regularly updated and readily available for teams involved in testing. Continuously review the test environment management process and identify areas for improvement, such as reducing environment setup times, increasing environment reliability, or optimizing resource utilization. Implement improvements to ensure that test environments are more efficient, cost-effective, and better aligned with the needs of the testing and release teams. Collaborate with IT security team to audit test environments and address any potential risks related to sensitive or regulated data.

Designing and Administering the Release Calendar

Will create a comprehensive release schedule the includes all BAU business processes & IT upgrades. Will create a mechanism for ad-hoc upgrades and requests to be included. Will administer any supporting processes to ensure adherence to the schedule. Coordinate release timelines across multiple teams (development, operations, QA, product management, etc.) to ensure that releases are properly scheduled and communicated. Coordinate with stakeholders to avoid conflicts and overlapping releases, ensuring adequate resources and time for each release. Define and document the release cycle, including key milestones (e.g., planning, development, testing, deployment, post-release support) for each release. Set and enforce clear deadlines for each phase of the release, ensuring timely delivery of software or updates into production. Adjust release schedules as necessary to accommodate high-priority items, emergency patches, or critical updates, ensuring minimal disruption to ongoing projects. Ensure that the release calendar is aligned with business goals and IT strategies, factoring in dependencies such as business-driven deadlines, customer needs, regulatory timelines, and marketing plans. Balance the demands of new features, enhancements, fixes, and infrastructure changes to ensure a well-rounded release schedule that supports both business and IT objectives. Identify and document dependencies between releases, ensuring that necessary components or services are available when needed. Track interdependencies and ensure that related teams are prepared for key release milestones, preventing delays due to unresolved dependencies. Regularly communicate the release calendar to all relevant teams, including developers, QA, business stakeholders, and IT operations, ensuring everyone is informed about upcoming releases and timelines. Provide clear and timely updates to stakeholders regarding any changes or shifts in the release schedule, ensuring proper coordination and expectations. Identify potential risks to the release schedule and collaborate with risk management teams to mitigate any impact on planned release dates. Ensure that testing activities, including functional testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing (UAT), are properly scheduled and aligned with the release calendar. Regularly monitor the progress of releases against the planned calendar, making adjustments to accommodate delays, unexpected changes, or critical issues. Ensure all releases adhere to quality standards, and that the release calendar accounts for these timelines and dependencies. Manage the inclusion of emergency releases or hotfixes into the release calendar, ensuring that urgent patches or fixes are deployed with minimal disruption to the overall release schedule. Prioritize emergency releases effectively, ensuring that they are scheduled without conflicting with other planned releases. Continuously review and refine the release calendar, ensuring it reflects changing business needs, new product releases, infrastructure changes, and other factors that may impact the release schedule. Regularly update the release calendar to reflect changes in scope, timelines, and priorities based on feedback from business and IT stakeholders.

Other duties as assigned.

What you'll bring to the role:

A Post-secondary 3-year Degree or equivalent in such disciplines as Computer Systems Design, Computer Sciences or a related field is required at the point of hire into this position. Requirement for one or more of the following certifications: ITIL, CSM or RTE certifications. Deep knowledge and technical proficiency gained through extensive education and business experience. Strong working knowledge of SDLC and Agile/Scrum. Strong communication skills with a proven ability to understand key concepts and communicate effectively with technical staff, business stakeholders and senior management. Proven ability to communicate technical concepts to nontechnical people to enhance understanding and drive decisions that lead to positive outcomes. Proven ability to collaborate, build relationships and influence individuals at all levels in a matrix-management environment (as well as external vendors and service providers) to ensure that segregation and overlapping roles are identified and coordinated. Strong organizational skills, the ability to perform under pressure and management of multiple priorities with competing demands for resources. Strong analytical, data-processing and problem-solving skills. Proficiency in process formulation and improvement. Demonstrated commitment and understanding of human rights, equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. The ability to communicate and work effectively with diverse students, employees, and communities.

What we offer:

Progressive vacation plan starting with 22 vacation days per year plus holiday closure. Defined Benefit pension plan (CAAT) with contributions matched by Mohawk College. 93% top up of maternity and parental leave pay for 52 weeks. Annual employee performance incentive program. Comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision, paramedical services (massage therapy, acupuncture, naturopath, psychotherapy and psychology), short-term and long-term disability. Ability to take courses at a reduced rate for employees and dependents.

To find out more about working at Mohawk College, please visit https://www.mohawkcollege.ca/about-mohawk/careers-at-mohawk


We are committed to reconciliation and nurturing an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible (IDEA) environment for everyone who learns and works at Mohawk College. We welcome applications from racialized persons, women, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities, 2SLGBTQIA+ persons, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.


The College is committed to fostering inclusive and barrier-free recruitment and selection processes. If you require accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please contact Human Resources.


To learn more about Mohawk College's commitments, please visit the Mohawk College strategic plan webpage: https://www.strategicplan.mohawkcollege.ca/