Release Manager - Payments Programme
Location: Dublin (Hybrid - minimum 1 day per week onsite office)
Contract: Initial contract to December 2026
Industry: Banking / Payments Transformation
Overview
We are seeking an experienced Release Manager to join a major payments transformation programme with our banking client, based in Dublin. This is a long-term engagement supporting the delivery, coordination, and governance of releases across a complex, cloud-enabled payments landscape.
The successful candidate will play a critical role in ensuring the smooth planning, coordination, deployment, and transition of releases into production, while maintaining operational stability and regulatory compliance within a highly regulated banking environment.
This role requires a strong background in release management, service transition, and stakeholder coordination, with experience working across large-scale payments or banking transformation programmes.
Key Responsibilities
- Own and manage the end-to-end release management process across the payments programme.
- Coordinate release planning activities across technology, operations, business, and third-party vendors.
- Ensure all releases meet governance, risk, compliance, and operational readiness requirements.
- Manage release calendars, deployment schedules, and environment dependencies.
- Drive Service Design, Service Introduction, and Service Transition activities to ensure successful handover into BAU support.
- Identify, manage, and mitigate delivery and operational risks associated with releases.
- Coordinate production deployments and support go-live activities.
- Work closely with engineering, infrastructure, testing, operations, and business teams to ensure alignment across delivery milestones.
- Facilitate release governance forums and provide regular programme reporting.
- Ensure adherence to ITIL-aligned service management processes and controls.
- Support incident reviews, lessons learned activities, and continuous improvement initiatives.
Required Experience
- 7-10+ years' experience in Project Management, Programme Management, or Release Management roles within Financial Services.
- Strong release management experience across complex technology programmes.
- Proven experience managing Service Design, Service Introduction, and Service Transition activities.
- Experience delivering within cloud-based environments.
- Experience operating within highly regulated banking or financial services organisations.
- Track record of managing multiple stakeholders, workstreams, and dependencies across large-scale programmes.
Required Knowledge
- Strong understanding of ITIL Service Management principles and frameworks.
- Deep understanding of service lifecycle management from design through to BAU operations.
- Knowledge of payments processing and payment schemes, with Faster Payments experience highly desirable.
- Understanding of cloud infrastructure environments (AWS and/or Azure).
- Familiarity with DevOps delivery practices and release governance.
- Knowledge of operational readiness, production support, and service transition frameworks.
Required Skills
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Strong governance, planning, and reporting capabilities.
- Ability to manage competing priorities within complex programme environments.
- Strong risk and dependency management skills.
- Excellent problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
- Ability to influence technical and business stakeholders at all levels.
Desirable Experience
- Retail banking experience.
- Exposure to Open Banking initiatives and API-led architectures.
- Experience working with operational resilience frameworks, including DORA.
- Vendor and third-party integration management experience.
- Experience supporting large-scale payments transformation programmes.
Qualifications
Desirable qualifications include:
- ITIL Intermediate or ITIL Managing Professional
- AWS or Azure Cloud Certifications
- Agile Delivery Certification (Scrum, SAFe, AgilePM or equivalent)
About Korn Ferry
Korn Ferry unleashes potential in people, teams, and organizations. We work with our clients to design optimal organization structures, roles, and responsibilities. We help them hire the right people and advise them on how to reward and motivate their workforce while developing professionals as they navigate and advance their careers. To learn more, please visit Korn Ferry at www.Kornferry.com
