Director, Technology Delivery and Release Management

pacificlife; Parrog; On-site; GBP 135,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Pacific Life invites a Director of Technology Delivery & Release Management to lead delivery governance, release strategy, and operational readiness across a complex technology portfolio. You will drive accountability, transparency, and collaboration among product, platform, and vendor teams in a highly matrixed environment.

The role emphasizes leadership, governance, and continuous improvement to deliver value with reduced risk, while aligning with strategic business goals and enterprise

Qualifications

• Experience leading delivery and release governance across large technology portfolios.
• Proven ability to drive operational discipline, risk management, and quality.
• Strong stakeholder management in matrixed organizations.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of delivery managers and release managers.
• Establish a culture focused on accountability, execution excellence, operational discipline, and continuous improvement.
• Coach and mentor leaders across the portfolio to strengthen delivery capabilities and execution maturity.
• Partner with technology and business leadership to establish delivery priorities aligned to strategic objectives.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on delivery strategy, operational readiness, and release governance.

Skills

Delivery leadership

Release management

Operational governance

Stakeholder management

Continuous improvement

Vendor management

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communications

Job description

Job Description:

The Director, Technology Delivery & Release Management is a critical leadership role within the Workforce Benefits Technology organization. This position is responsible for ensuring delivery excellence, release governance, execution predictability, and operational readiness across the division's technology portfolio.

Success in this role requires a balanced combination of technology delivery leadership, release management expertise, operational governance, stakeholder management, and continuous improvement. This leader will champion delivery and release processes that foster quality, reliability, transparency, and alignment across interconnected product, platform, infrastructure, and vendor teams.

As the organization continues to scale, this leader will drive the evolution of delivery and release management capabilities while ensuring the technology ecosystem operates as a cohesive, predictable, and governable system. The role requires strong partnership across technology leadership, product management, business stakeholders, enterprise platform teams, and strategic vendors to deliver business value while minimizing execution and operational risk. The successful candidate will demonstrate exceptional organizational leadership, execution discipline, and the ability to influence outcomes across a highly matrixed environment.

This role requires being on-site 4 days per week in Newport Beach, CA, Charlotte, NC or Omaha, NE.

Core Accountabilities

• Accountable for delivery governance and execution excellence across the technology portfolio.
• Own release management strategy, governance, planning, coordination, and execution readiness.
• Drive transparency, accountability, and predictability across strategic initiatives and technology investments.
• Establish end-to-end delivery and release management standards, controls, and operating procedures.
• Coordinate dependencies across product teams, enterprise platforms, infrastructure teams, and vendors.
• Drive continuous improvement in delivery performance, release quality, and operational stability.
• Reduce delivery risk, release failures, production incidents, rework, and escalations through disciplined execution governance.

Key Responsibilities

Organizational Leadership

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of delivery managers and release managers.
• Establish a culture focused on accountability, execution excellence, operational discipline, and continuous improvement.
• Coach and mentor leaders across the portfolio to strengthen delivery capabilities and execution maturity.
• Partner with technology and business leadership to establish delivery priorities aligned to strategic objectives.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on delivery strategy, operational readiness, and release governance.

Technology Delivery Leadership

• Own delivery governance and execution assurance across product, platform, data, and integration teams.
• Establish delivery management processes that enable predictable outcomes while maintaining agility.
• Drive cross-functional planning and coordination for key strategic initiatives.
• Monitor milestone achievement, dependency management, and execution risks across the portfolio.
• Ensure initiatives are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with agreed business outcomes.
• Facilitate executive delivery reviews and escalation management activities.

Release Management & Operational Readiness

• Own the division's release management operating model, governance framework, and release calendar.
• Lead release planning, readiness reviews, go-live governance, and post-release assessments.
• Ensure successful coordination of releases across multiple applications, platforms, and vendor partners.
• Establish release quality gates, deployment standards, rollback procedures, and risk management practices.
• Drive production readiness reviews and operational support preparedness prior to releases.
• Maintain executive visibility into release readiness, deployment risk, and operational impacts.
• Continuously improve deployment quality, efficiency, and predictability.

Strategic Planning & Portfolio Execution

• Partner with Product Management and Technology Leadership to establish and maintain delivery roadmaps.
• Align release schedules with business priorities, regulatory deadlines, and enterprise initiatives.
• Support annual planning, quarterly planning, and execution prioritization activities.
• Evaluate delivery capacity, execution constraints, and dependency risks across the portfolio.
• Drive successful execution of initiatives requiring coordination across enterprise technology organizations and vendor teams.

Vendor & Enterprise Partnership Leadership

• Partner closely with strategic vendors and enterprise platform teams to ensure delivery commitments are achieved.
• Lead governance activities related to external delivery organizations and release dependencies.
• Facilitate issue resolution and escalation management across vendors and enterprise stakeholders.
• Influence vendor de