Sr. Release Manager

PAR Technology • Toronto, ON

4d • CA$100,000 - CA$119,000 • Remote

About The Position

A Sr. Release Manager at PAR Technology orchestrates the end-to-end software release lifecycle for enterprise restaurant and retail systems, applying disciplined program management to bring structure, predictability, and accountability to complex delivery. The Release Manager coordinates cross-functional teams such as engineering, DevOps, product, and QA to execute complex, high-frequency deployments across stacks, ensuring safe, reliable production rollouts without service disruptions while operating in a fast-paced environment. This role is also expected to identify and act upon opportunities to apply AI and intelligent tooling to the release process itself — reducing manual effort, surfacing risk earlier, and continuously improving how PAR ships software.
The ideal candidate is a results-oriented self-starter with proven experience in release management and technical program management; the ability to plan, sequence, and drive multi-team workstreams to a fixed date and the ability to influence without authority. This candidate is also comfortable evaluating and adopting AI-powered tools to improve how releases are planned, tracked, and executed.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in release management, program management, or project management, within a cross-functional multi-team software development environment.
• Deep understanding and experience with SDLC and Agile and Scrum frameworks.
• Proficiency in delivery and release tooling such as Jira (Administrator level), Confluence, Monday.com, and similar deployment, reporting, and dashboarding tools, with the ability to configure and maintain these systems, not just use them.
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI and intelligent tooling (e.g., AI-assisted documentation and communication, automated risk/anomaly detection, chatbot-driven status reporting, workflow automation) to reduce manual effort, accelerate cadence, and continuously improve the release process.
• Superior organizational skills with a strong focus on quality and execution rigor.
• Strong program management capabilities, including building and maintaining detailed release plans, RAID logs, and dependency maps across multiple concurrent workstreams, and proactively managing scope, timeline, and resourcing tradeoffs.
• Strong collaboration and relationship-building skills; able to bring together diverse personalities and functions.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to document, present, and explain complex technical topics clearly to varied audiences.
• Experience creating executive-ready presentations and presenting to senior leaders.
• Strong listening skills and confidence in asking thoughtful, clarifying, and sometimes difficult questions.
• Passion for working with technical teams and environments.
• Strong leadership and influence skills without formal authority; a true servant leader.
• Excellent facilitation, negotiation, and conflict management skills.
• High degree of ownership, independence, and adaptability in fast-paced settings.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting large-scale software releases or platform transformations.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Ability to translate ambiguity into structured plans and execution paths.
• Comfort facilitating executive-level and cross-functional meetings.

Responsibilities

• Deployment Execution: Own release-level prioritization, milestones, deliverables, and success criteria. Act as the primary point of contact for production deployments, patching, release issues, escalations, and contingency planning.
• Cross-Functional Orchestration: Drive alignment across engineering, DevOps, Product, QA, and Customer Success teams to ensure features ship on the committed release date and meet defined business and quality targets. Identify and manage internal and external dependencies, risks, and logistics throughout the release process, and build strong, trusted relationships with stakeholders. Apply conflict resolution, cross-team collaboration, and effective communication to drive alignment and results.
• Release Scheduling: Plan, coordinate, and maintain the release calendar across multiple development and testing environments.
• Quality & Risk Management: Monitor pre-release gates and coordinate “Go/No-Go” discussions to ensure software meets all quality, security, and compliance standards.
• Process Improvements and Automation: Identify, pilot, and scale AI and automation tooling (e.g., AI-assisted documentation and communication, automated quality/risk signal aggregation, workflow bots) to streamline deployment processes, reduce manual coordination overhead, and accelerate release cadence. Track and report on the measurable impact of these improvements.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed