Senior Manager, Release & Program Management in United State

About Our Client

Our client is a smart, intuitive platform that makes production payroll and accounting easier, faster, and more secure. It provides a unified payroll platform that seamlessly connects your entire team—production, accounting, cast, and crew—all in one place. The platform empowers production teams to manage projects, pay cast and crew, track expenses, and generate data-driven insights, while enabling workers to manage timecards, track pay, and onboard to new projects from any device. This organization brings clarity and dependability to production payroll, while increasing the productivity of the entire team.

Trusted by companies of all sizes, this organization powers payroll for some of the industry’s top production companies. Its growing team spans across the USA and Canada, including entertainment and technology experts. This organization is backed by top-tier investors.

The Opportunity – Senior Manager, Release & Program Management (Remote - USA / CANADA)

About The Role

Our client is looking for a Senior Manager, Release & Program Management to evolve and mature its release management function and ongoing program. This role spans release management, program management, and product operations to ensure the way the organization aligns, builds, and launches is predictable, coordinated, and continuously improving.

This role sits within the Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) organization and reports directly to the Head of Product. As a player-coach, this individual will manage a small team of Technical Program Managers and serve as the organization's release manager. They will be responsible for execution, process improvement, and implementing the tools and frameworks that help the organization scale.

This individual will not only lead releases and the TPM team but also raise the bar for how the organization works together. Their impact will be felt in more predictable and trusted ways of working, better cross-functional alignment, and no surprises for partners—because they’ll know exactly what the organization is doing and why.

This individual will also oversee the program management of key customer accounts, serving as a single point of coordination across Engineering, Product, and Design. By working closely with Client Ops and Sales, they will ensure that customers’ early experiences with the platform meet their needs and delight them along the way. They will always advocate for the customer (internal and external), ensuring programs and releases deliver not only predictability but also delightful experiences that solve real-world problems.

If you’re passionate about maturing processes while leaning into a bias for action, aligning cross-functional teams, and leading through both strategy and action, this role is for you.

Key Responsibilities

• Be the Release Manager : Directly manage the organization’s release process, ensuring predictability, quality, and alignment across Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD), along with Client Ops and GTM. Partner with project leads on QA to ensure testing processes, release readiness, and quality standards are consistently met.

• Lead as a Player-Coach : Manage and mentor a team of Technical Program Managers while remaining hands-on in release management and key programs. Set a high bar for execution, communication, and collaboration, and hold the team accountable to meeting that standard. Foster a culture of accountability and inclusion where TPMs can do their best work.

• Drive Clear Communication & Foster Alignment : Establish and model impeccable cross-department communication, ensuring updates, risks, and decisions are conveyed with clarity and consistency. Act as a connector across business, product, and technical teams, creating alignment on roles, responsibilities, and readiness for every stage of build and launch. Prepare release notes so that cross-functional partners experience no surprises—because of over-communication, and they fully understand what is being done and why.

• Measure and Improve Impact : Define how release success is measured, evaluate outcomes, and use insights to refine future launches.

• Drive Program Execution : Partner with EPD leaders to identify where Technical Program Managers can add the most value—whether by driving key strategic initiatives, coordinating complex cross-group work, or ensuring execution against business-critical priorities.

• Support Key Accounts : Oversee program management for critical customer accounts, coordinating across Engineering, Product, and Design, and partnering with Client Ops and Sales to deliver delightful early customer experiences.

• Continuously Improve : Identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and strengthen how the organization aligns, builds, and launches. Success will be measured not by the number of processes introduced, but by the tangible impact improvements have on predictability, efficiency, and stakeholder confidence.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of leadership experience in Release Management, Program Management, and/or Product Operations within SaaS organizations, with a proven ability to set clear expectations, hold teams accountable, and maintain a consistently high bar for impact.
• Demonstrated success as a player-coach—balancing team leadership with hands-on ownership of key initiatives.
• Strong track record of executing complex, cross-functional programs from alignment through launch.
• Experience evolving and improving processes that deliver measurable outcomes, not just adding steps.
• Exceptional communication and facilitation skills, with a proven ability to bridge departments, ensure transparency, and keep stakeholders aligned.
• A high bar for performance, with the ability to raise team standards and coach individuals to achieve their best work.
• Experience with program management and incident management tools (e.g., Linear, PagerDuty).
• A bias for action in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Customer obsession.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with scaling program management functions in high-growth SaaS, startup, or scale-up environments.
• Experience building out Product Operations from the ground up at a previous company.
• Experience working directly with Engineering, Product, and Design leaders to shape how and where TPMs drive impact.
• Experience in payroll, fintech, or entertainment industry.

Why Join Us

Creativity meets technology—and not just in the product.

In addition to a competitive salary and all the benefits expected from a fast-growing technology company, you’ll get access to a team of creative problem solvers and the chance to see contributions make large impacts.

Benefits include:

• Unlimited Paid Time Off
• Work from anywhere in Canada and USA
• Health and Dental benefits
• Up to $1,500 USD/ $2,025 CAD towards IT set up for your home
• Up to 2% matching RRSP / 401K
• Learning and Development opportunities
• Up to $50 USD/ $67.50 CAD towards Internet/Cell phone service

Our Pledge to Fostering an Inclusive and Safe Workplace:

This organization pledges to be a harassment- and discrimination-free space for everyone, regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, nationality, neurotype, personal appearance, political affiliation, professional background, race, religion, or sexual identity or orientation.

Compensation

$148.8K – $227.8K • Multiple Ranges

Note:

“We are not the EOR (Employer of Record) for this position. Our role in this specific opportunity is to connect outstanding candidates with a top-tier employer. Swooped helps candidates around the world to discover and stay focused on the jobs they want until they can complete a full application in the hiring company career page/ATS.”