Product - Release Manager

Whitbread; Dunstable; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare: Family BUPA

Pension: 10% matched

Discounts: Premier Inn & Restaurant

Annual incentive up to 20%

Job summary

Whitbread seeks an experienced Release Manager to coordinate vendor-led releases, patches and changes across Dayforce and supported services. You’ll own release schedules, identify milestones, dependencies and deployment windows to ensure timely, controlled delivery.

You’ll work with QA, security, and operations to uphold high software quality, policies and governance. You’ll manage change-control, assess risks, obtain approvals and communicate with senior stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Experience planning, coordinating and executing technology releases with minimal downtime or service disruption.
• Experience managing releases across development, test, staging and production environments.
• Experience working with multi-regional HR and payroll solutions.
• Hands-on ITIL-based change management, including Change Advisory Board processes.
• Experience owning and managing major incidents, including stakeholder communications and restoration of critical services.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain integrated release schedules covering vendor releases, patches and changes.
• Coordinate releases across vendors, operational teams and the wider business for timely delivery.
• Establish and maintain release policies, standards and governance, with deployment and rollback plans.
• Manage defects from release testing through resolution with QA, development and operations teams.
• Oversee change-control processes with risk assessments, approvals and stakeholder communications.
• Analyse post-release issues, identify root causes and strengthen future delivery; prepare updates for stakeholders.

Skills

Release planning

Release management

HR payroll systems

ITIL change management

Major incidents handling

Job description

We’re looking for an experienced Release Manager to coordinate the controlled delivery of vendor-led product releases, patches and technology changes across Dayforce and other supported services.

Working across Technology, People teams, suppliers and operational stakeholders, you’ll provide end-to-end coordination of the release lifecycle. You’ll ensure impacts, dependencies, testing, assurance, approvals, communications, deployment readiness and post-release activities are effectively planned, evidenced and governed.

This is an opportunity to play a central role in delivering stable, reliable releases that support evolving business needs, minimise disruption and continuously improve how technology change is delivered.

Role: Release Manager

Contract Type: Full time, Permanent

Location: Whitbread Court, Dunstable (Hybrid, 3 days per week)

Why You’ll Love It Here

• Healthcare: Family BUPA healthcare
• 10% matched pension
• Discounts: Up to 60% discount on Premier Inn stays and 25% discount on our Restaurant brand
• Annual Incentive of up to 20% Bonus

Check out all our benefits here: https://www.whitbreadcareers.com/about-us/benefits/

What you’ll be doing:

You’ll own and maintain integrated release schedules covering vendor releases, patches and internally initiated changes, identifying key milestones, dependencies, deployment windows, testing periods and stakeholder decision points. You’ll coordinate releases across vendors, operational teams and the wider business, ensuring they are delivered in a timely, controlled and high-quality way.

You’ll establish and maintain effective release policies, standards and governance, while overseeing deployment and rollback strategies designed to minimise service disruption. You’ll manage defects identified during release testing through to resolution and work closely with QA, development, security, infrastructure, support and operations teams to maintain high software-quality standards.

You’ll also manage change-control processes, ensuring appropriate risk assessments, approvals and stakeholder communications are in place. Following each release, you’ll analyse issues, track root causes and use the findings to strengthen future delivery. You’ll translate complex vendor-release information into clear updates for senior stakeholders and business teams, while maintaining release documentation, deployment guides and rollback plans.

What you’ll need:

• Experience planning, coordinating and executing technology releases with minimal downtime and service disruption.
• Experience managing releases across development, test, staging and production environments.
• Must have experience working with multi-regional HR and payroll solutions.
• Hands-on knowledge of ITIL-based change management, including Change Advisory Board processes.
• Experience owning and managing major incidents, including stakeholder communications and the restoration of critical services.

Be part of our Technology Team at Whitbread

Through collaboration, passion and hiring the smartest minds, our Technology team builds products and services that are used by 38,000 of us at Whitbread and millions of guests. Everything from an eCommerce website that handles £2 billion in transactions per year, applications that are scalable across our 1,200 hotel and restaurants, devices that enable our teams and guests to have a seamless experience, all whilst keeping data secure. Together we’re building the hotel of the future.