Senior Release Manager - IFS Copperleaf

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Release Manager to manage, coordinate, and govern the delivery of IFS Copperleaf’s product releases. The Senior Release Manager is the single point of accountability for a release, owning it from planning through general availability, and ensuring the committed scope ships on the agreed upon date at the agreed upon level of quality.

Senior Release Managers operate at the intersection of Engineering and R&D, Product, Client Experience, Operations, Sales, and Marketing. They orchestrate critical release activities across the three R&D pillars: Core Engineering, AI Engineering & Transformation, and Agentic Platform, and across the operations and commercial functions, ensuring every team and every function moves on the same rhythm. They make complex, multi-pillar releases predictable for customers and the business, while progressively shortening the internal release cycle to early-adopter customers so R&D can learn and iterate faster without disrupting the external GA cadence the market depends on.

This is a pivotal time to be in this role. The R&D team is implementing an Agentic Operating Model (AOM) to accelerate delivery, having humans and AI Agents working in collaboration to reshare how R&D builds software, embedding AI-augmented production capabilities into every stage of the release lifecycle. The Senior Release Manager is central to making both transitions work: building the cadence, integrating AOM into the release governance model, and ensuring we continue to deliver predictably to our customers while the way we build software fundamentally changes.

Reporting to the VP of Engineering in R&D, the Senior Release Manager works in close partnership with the three Senior Directors leading the R&D pillars, with Product Management, Customer Experience (CX), Operations, Marketing and Sales teams. The Senior Release Manager also works with close relationship with Program Managers and Technical Product Owners (Champions), who report to their R&D’s Senior Director on the day-to-day coordination of the release success.

Key Responsibilities

Release Train Coordination 

• Control and manage the release project plan across the three R&D pillars (Core Engineering, AI Engineering & Transformation, Agentic Platform) and the cells within them. 
• Own and run the release battle rhythm, bringing all pillars, Product, and key cross-functional stakeholders together to agree and deliver on scope and dependencies. 
• Leads cross-pillar meeting cadences and governs release activities (evolved from the current R&D Internal Progress Review), ensuring real-time visibility across pillars and cells. 
• Operate a dual annual release cadence: maintain the external GA cadence customers depend on for stability, pricing, and adoption planning, while progressively accelerating the internal release cadence to early-adopter customers — shortening the cycle from code-complete to early-adopter availability and creating faster feedback loops into R&D. 

Release Planning & Scope Governance 

• Maintain the release project plan, release calendar, and canonical scope baseline. 
• Coordinate cross-pillar dependencies, sequencing, and shared-capacity decisions; maintain the cross-pillar dependency board. 
• Establish release-level commitments, exit criteria, and definition of done at each gate. 
• Contribute to release planning and senior leadership gates approval (3 gates: scope intent; execution plan; pre-launch review). 
• Run change control: detect, surface, and adjudicate scope changes through formal change management; block undocumented scope from entering the release. 
• Hold defined decision rights at each gate: authority to block release progression on unmet exit criteria, defer scope, and require rework; escalate to the VP of Engineering and R&D when gate decisions are contested or commercial commitments conflict with readiness. 
• Maintain release governance documentation, runbooks, policies, and audit trails. 
• Run release progress reports and communications through the organization, including activity progress, risk register, and release scope, schedule, and cost elements. 

Cross-Pillar Coordination 

• Partner with the Program Managers and Technical Product Owners (Champions) across the three R&D pillars as the primary interface for release coordination. 
• Aggregate pillar-level status, risks, and dependencies into a release-level view. 
• Convene cross-pillar problem-solving sessions when dependencies, conflicts, or scope changes require negotiation between pillars. 
• Work with R&D Senior Directors, supporting them in scope, capacity, and prioritisation decisions that affect release outcomes. 

Cross-Functional Alignment 

• Establish and own specific gate release meetings, aligning Operations and Client Experience on support readiness, client migration, and infrastructure readiness for the upcoming release as well as enablement, positioning, and launch readiness. 
• Drive active participation in release enablement: coordinate demo releases and partner with Solutions Consulting on demo scripts so each release lands with field-ready demo assets aligned to the shipped scope. 
• Own Executive Status meeting with senior leadership, covering what was completed, what is planned, key risks, and decisions required. 
• Bridge commercial commitments (e.g. customer agreements, partner agreements, MOUs, summit announcements) with engineering scope; flag conflicts early and route them through change control before they become release commitments. 

Risk, Issue & Dependency Management 

• Identify, track, and escalate release-level risks, issues, and dependencies. 
• Run release risk reviews and contingency planning at each planning increment. 
• Govern hotfix and out-of-band releases: own the decision to trigger an emergency release, control scope, coordinate fast-path approvals across Engineering, Operations, and Client Experience, and lead customer communications during the incident window. 

Release Readiness 

• Frame release readiness across three tiers: commercial readiness (Sales can position and sell), early access or limited availability (constrained customer engagement, no GA promise), and general availability (full release). 
• Coordinate security, compliance, and regulatory sign-off as a release gate in partnership with InfoSec, Legal, and Operations — including SOC 2 / ISO control evidence, regional data-residency requirements, and any industry-specific obligations relevant to utilities, oil and gas, and other regulated customers. 
• Coordinate early access and beta programs in partnership with Client Experience: participant eligibility, logistics, structured feedback collection. 
• Ensure release readiness activities are completed in-line with schedule and gate requirements for exit. 
• Ensure technical and internal-facing documentation required by each consuming function (Engineering, Client Experience, Operations, Support, Solutions Consulting) is complete and current for the release; go-to-market documentation remains owned by Product Management. 
• Track client adoption of upcoming versions and upgrade cycles in partnership with Client Experience and Sales; surface upgrade status against renewal timelines and flag accounts where version lag could put renewal at risk. 

AOM Integration 

• Operate within the Agentic Operating Model: leverage the AOM as the release production model.  
• Collaborate with Program Managers and Technical Product Owners (Champions), and Senior Directors on AOM adoption from a release-readiness perspective; provide release-level feedback to the AOM team on what is working and what is not. 
• Use AI-powered tools to streamline release workflows and accelerate decision-making. 

Continuous Improvement & Operating Model Stewardship 

• Run cross-functional post-release retrospectives at the close of each planning increment. 
• Track release metrics: deployment frequency, lead & cycle time, MTTR, scope variance. 
• Own release-level success measures and report against them each cycle: on-time GA rate, scope variance, first-pass gate-readiness rate, post-release defect escape rate, customer upgrade-adoption rate within the target window, and year-over-year reduction in internal release cycle time to early-adopter customers. 
• Maintain the release-management playbook as a living document; evolve the operating model based on retrospective findings and metrics. 
• Drive process improvements grounded in evidence and Inspect & Adapt outcomes. 

Building Knowledge 

• Stay fluent in AOM practices, AI tools, and emerging delivery capabilities, applying them to improve release outcomes and operating-model maturity. 
• Build broad awareness of how each function: Product, R&D, Client Experience, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, consumes the release. 
• Cultivate trusted relationships across the three R&D pillars and across all cross-functional partners; operate as a credible central coordination node. 

Applying Skills

• Communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical audiences at every organizational level, including executive forums.
• Operate decisively under ambiguity and time pressure.
• Balance competing priorities and align stakeholders toward a shared release goal.
• Use modern delivery tooling effectively (Jira, Azure DevOps, Linear, release dashboards).
• Apply structured thinking to scope, risk, and dependency management.
• Use AI-powered tools to improve release visibility, decision-making, and delivery workflows.

Influencing Behavior

• Drive accountability across functions without direct line authority.
• Hold the line on governance and quality, even under commercial or executive pressure.
• Surface uncomfortable truths early; advocate for what the release actually needs.
• Foster a culture of release discipline, transparency, and continuous improvement.
• Promote release-management best practices through documentation, knowledge-sharing, and cross-pillar collaboration.

You Have the Following Background

• 5+ years in software delivery, with 3+ years leading release management or large-scale software delivery in complex, multi-team organizations.
• Strong understanding of the software development lifecycle, agile delivery practices, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and scaled-agile delivery principles (cadence, increment-based planning, cross-team synchronization, system demos, inspect-and-adapt).
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate cross-functional teams (Engineering, Product, Quality, Security, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success) toward predictable release outcomes.
• Experience driving release enablement in partnership with Solutions Consulting / Pre-Sales — including demo releases, demo-script alignment, and internal documentation that equips each function to consume the release.
• Familiarity with the Copperleaf Suite and asset-intensive industries (utilities, oil & gas, mining), or comparable enterprise SaaS and B2B software domains.
• Experience releasing software into regulated environments — coordinating with InfoSec, Legal, and Compliance on pre-GA gates (SOC 2, ISO, regional data residency, industry-specific obligations).
• AI fluency: comfort using AI tools as part of daily workflows, with an understanding of how AI is reshaping software delivery.
• Strong written and verbal communication; comfortable presenting to executive audiences and producing executive-ready status reporting.
• Ability to balance competing priorities, align stakeholders, and maintain momentum in dynamic environments.

What We’re Offering

• Salary Range: $135,000 CAD - $180,000 CAD 
• Variable Company Bonus Plan
• Permanent, Full-time
• Flexible paid time off, including sick and holiday 
• Medical, dental, & vision insurance 
• RRSP Company contribution 
• Life insurance and disability benefits 
• Tuition assistance 
• Community involvement and volunteering events

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.