Specialist, Product Delivery - Temporary

Being part of Air Canada is to become part of an iconic Canadian symbol, recently ranked the best Airline in North America. Let your career take flight by joining our diverse and vibrant team at the leading edge of passenger aviation.

At Air Canada, we are committed to redefining the travel experience through innovative technology and seamless product delivery. As we continue to strengthen our position as a global leader, we are looking for a Specialist, Product Delivery to join our dynamic IT Product team in Montreal.

This role is pivotal in ensuring that complex Distribution Platform capabilities, including New Distribution Capabilities (NDC), B2B and payment solutions, are delivered predictably and in alignment with strategic priorities. As a core member of the Product team, the Specialist, Product Delivery works in close partnership with Product Management and Engineering leadership to coordinate the integrated delivery of features spanning multiple PODs, systems, business functions, operational teams, vendors, and external partners.

If you thrive in fast-paced environments, excel at leading through influence, and are passionate about enabling world-class digital experiences for travellers, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on Air Canada’s transformation journey.

Responsibilities:

- Feature Delivery Management Lead the end-to-end delivery of complex product features from planning through release, stabilization, and transition to operations, ensuring alignment with product strategy, customer value, and business objectives.
- Develop and maintain an integrated delivery plan covering scope, milestones, ownership, dependencies, risks, decisions, testing, release readiness, and operational activities.
- Coordinate delivery across multiple PODs, technology platforms, business functions, operational teams, vendors, and external partners when a feature extends beyond the core Product team.
- Partner with the Product Manager and Engineering Lead to translate product priorities into clear, achievable delivery commitments aligned with POD capacity, technical feasibility, sequencing, and business priorities.
- Establish clear accountability across participating teams and ensure required product, technical, business, operational, and partner activities are identified, assigned, and completed.
- Lead cross-functional delivery checkpoints for complex features, focusing on milestone alignment, dependency resolution, readiness, decisions, and delivery confidence without duplicating routine POD ceremonies.

- Dependency, Risk and Decision Management Proactively identify and manage cross-team, cross-system, business, operational, vendor, and partner dependencies that may affect delivery.
- Maintain an integrated view of delivery risks, issues, assumptions, dependencies, capacity constraints, and key decisions.
- Drive timely resolution of blockers and escalate material risks with a clear statement of impact, options, recommendation, and required decision.
- Ensure changes to scope, sequencing, timing, or technical approach are reflected across all impacted delivery and readiness plans.

- Release and Operational Readiness Plan and manage integrated release timelines in alignment with the Product roadmap, POD delivery plans, partner commitments, operational constraints, and business priorities.
- Coordinate readiness across Product, Engineering, Architecture, QA, Cybersecurity, Operations, Implementation, Business, and external partner teams.
- Facilitate readiness reviews and go/no-go decisions, ensuring that testing, documentation, approvals, deployment planning, communications, training, business-process changes, support procedures, monitoring, and contingency plans are completed.
- Ensure impacted business and operational teams understand feature changes, customer or partner impacts, support requirements, and escalation paths before launch.
- Coordinate production launch, post-release stabilization, issue follow-up, partner rollout, and handover to operational and support teams.

- Stakeholder Leadership and Delivery Governance Serve as the central delivery coordination point for assigned complex features and maintain alignment across Product, Technology, Business, Operations, vendors, and partner teams.
- Establish fit-for-purpose governance based on feature complexity, with a focus on accountability, decisions, risk management, and blocker resolution.
- Provide concise and transparent updates on progress, milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, required actions, and release confidence to stakeholders and leadership.
- Manage stakeholder expectations and facilitate alignment where priorities, scope, timing, capacity, or cross-team commitments require resolution.
- Maintain delivery dashboards and governance artefacts using agreed tools and reliable source data.

- POD Enablement and Continuous Improvement Support the Product Manager and Engineering Lead in aligning roadmap priorities, feature sequencing, delivery milestones, and release plans.
- Ensure features are sufficiently defined and ready for delivery, including scope, business requirements, acceptance criteria, dependencies, and testing considerations.
- Identify recurring delivery bottlenecks and recommend improvements that strengthen POD flow, predictability, quality, and efficiency.
- Monitor meaningful delivery measures such as milestone predictability, dependency resolution, readiness, release quality, and stabilization outcomes.
- Promote reusable delivery practices, readiness checklists, lessons learned, and continuous improvement across the Product team.

Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Technology Management, Product Management, Engineering, or a related field; a master’s degree is an asset.
- Experience leading complex product delivery, release management, product operations, or cross-functional technology initiatives in a complex organization.
- Demonstrated ability to coordinate delivery across Product, Engineering, Architecture, QA, Operations, business teams, vendors, and external partners.
- Strong understanding of product delivery lifecycles, Agile and iterative delivery practices, backlog management, dependency management, and release readiness.
- Proven experience managing integrated plans, delivery risks, decisions, stakeholder expectations, and leadership communications.
- Familiarity with NDC, airline systems, travel technology, APIs, integrations, or payment platforms is an asset.
- Proficiency with Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, dashboards, or equivalent delivery and collaboration tools.
- Knowledge of security, privacy, accessibility, compliance, and regulatory considerations relevant to airline, distribution, or payment platforms.
- Excellent leadership, facilitation, communication, stakeholder management, negotiation, and influencing skills, including the ability to lead without direct authority.
- Highly organized, collaborative, outcome-focused, and comfortable managing ambiguity and competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Technical acumen to understand APIs, integrations, system dependencies, environments, and production-readiness considerations.
- Proactive problem solver with sound judgment, strong attention to detail, and a continuous-improvement mindset.
- Demonstrate punctuality and dependability to support overall team success in a fast-paced environment.

Conditions of Employment:

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country of interest at the time any offer of employment is made and are responsible for obtaining any required work permits, visas, or other authorizations necessary for employment. Prior to their start date, candidates will also need to provide proof of their eligibility to work in the country of interest.

Linguistic Requirements

Based on equal qualifications, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.

Diversity and Inclusion

Air Canada is strongly committed to Diversity and Inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible and rewarding work environment which highlights employees’ unique contributions to our company’s success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from all to help us build a diverse workforce which reflects the diversity of our customers, and communities, in which we live and serve.

Air Canada thanks all candidates for their interest; however only those sele cted to continue in the process will be contacted.