Release Manager

Join a Challenger

Being a traditional bank just isn’t our thing. We are big believers in innovating the banking experience because we believe Canadians deserve better options, and we challenge ourselves and our teams to creatively transform what’s possible in banking. Our team is made up of inquisitive and agile minds that find smarter ways of doing things. If you’re not afraid of taking on big challenges and redefining the future, you belong with us. You’ll get to work with people who will encourage you to reach new heights. We like to keep things fun, ask questions and learn together.

We are a big (and growing!) family. Overall we serve more than 670,000 people across Canada through Equitable Bank, Canada's Challenger Bank™, and have been around for more than 50 years. Equitable Bank's wholly-owned subsidiary, Concentra Bank, supports credit unions across Canada that serve more than six million members. Together we have over $125 billion in combined assets under management and administration, with a clear mandate to drive change in Canadian banking to enrich people's lives. Our customers have named our EQ Bank digital platform (eqbank.ca) one of the top banks in Canada on the Forbes World's Best Banks list since 2021. 

The Work

The Release manager will support and maintain Equitable’s Cloud development. They will collaborate and communicate with various internal and external cross functional teams at every level, for example, DevOps, Quality Assurance, external cloud vendors such as Temenos, API developers, and Project Stakeholders, to facilitate environmental requirements on various projects. They will also be responsible for planning and managing software releases for digital banking during the full SDLC lifecycle, including post implementation warranty period. They will implement governance for releases by applying checkpoints, processes, and gates throughout release phases in a dynamic and fast paced environment. They will maintain an integrated release plan, communicate date changes accordingly and ensure that entry into the release satisfies all entry criteria requirements.

The Core Responsibilities Of The Job:

• Coordinate, monitor and maintain development/testing environments across multiple teams to know what is going on where at any given point in time
• Mitigate issues in said environments and work with vendors as necessary to permanently resolve issues
• Recommend approaches to streamline and integrate technological processes in the organization to improve overall release management efficiencies
• Plan, co-ordinate and facilitate production deployments
• Collaborates efficiently and effectively with several stakeholders including but not limited to Developers, QA, BA, Architects, DevOps Engineers, and other team members to drive releases
• Maintain up-to-date documentation for tickets, deployments, environments, procedures, etc.
• Manage the release pipeline towards QA, Staging and Production deployments
• Ensure that a release satisfies all exit criteria requirements (ensure completeness of release document)
• Track, monitor and report in environments and releases daily, weekly, and monthly at various management forums as required from time to time
• Manages risks and resolves issues related to release schedule and code quality
• Conduct Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews
• Produce Deployment Plans and delivery runbooks
• Release delivering to production on-time with zero disruptions to our existing business and customers.
• Coordinate patching and maintenance activities with vendors for environments.
• Ensure that application versions are correctly deployed to the appropriate test environment for each phase of testing.
• Coordination of test data in lower environments are according to testing requirements. 

Let’s Talk About You!

• Post-secondary/undergrad degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related technical degree required
• Minimum 4 years’ experience in the financial services industry and good knowledge of retail digital products
• Sound understanding of cloud technology and can drive environment troubleshooting discussions
• Familiar with DevOps tools and process (Jenkins, Argo CD, etc.), Atlassian tools, including JIRA and Confluence
• Proficient user of all Microsoft Office 365 desktop and collaboration tools (e.g. MS Teams)
• Good knowledge of Software Development Life Cycle concepts and best practices for waterfall and agile methodologies
• Good knowledge of ITIL framework and related support processes for incident, problem and change management
• Project management and coordination experience an asset
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Experience working in a banking or financial services environment
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervisory direction
• Strong leadership skills to manage functional teams directly and indirectly toward common solutions.

#LI-Hybrid

What we offer [For full-time permanent roles]

💰 Competitive discretionary bonus 

✨ Market leading RRSP match program

🩺 Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits

📝 Employee Share Purchase Plan

👶🏽 Maternity/Parental top-up while you care for your little one

🏝 Generous vacation policy and personal days 

🖥 Virtual events to connect with your fellow colleagues

🎓 Annual professional development allowance and a comprehensive Career Development program

💛 A fulfilling opportunity to join one of the top FinTechs and help create a new kind of banking experience

The incumbent will be working hybrid and in office time will be spent working from Equitable Bank’s additional office space located at 351 King Street East, Toronto, ON.

Equitable Bank is deeply committed to inclusion. Our organization is stronger and our employees thrive when we honour and celebrate everyone’s diverse experiences and perspectives. In tandem with that commitment, we support and encourage our staff to grow not just in their career path, but personally as well. 

We commit to providing a barrier-free recruitment process and work environment for all applicants. Please let us know of any accommodations needed so that you can bring your best self to the application process and beyond. All candidates considered for hire must successfully pass a criminal background check and credit check to qualify for hire. While we appreciate your interest in applying, an Equitable recruiter will only contact leading candidates whose skills and qualifications closely match the requirements of the position.

We can’t wait to get to know you!