Senior Portfolio Release Manager — Flights Acquisition & Retention

Senior Portfolio Release Manager
This role is eligible for our hybrid work model: 2 days in-office.
This job posting is for an existing, currently vacant position
Senior Portfolio Release Manager — Flights Acquisition & Retention
Our Technology team is the backbone of our company: constantly creating, testing, learning, and iterating to better meet the needs of our customers. If you thrive in a fast-paced, ideas-led environment, you’re in the right place.
Why this job’s a big deal:
As a Senior Portfolio Release Manager, your role centers on orchestrating the successful, predictable, and scalable delivery across the Flights Acquisition & Retention group. This group sits in our Flights organization and is responsible for growing our market footprint through owned channels, meta and agentic distribution, and deal products that convert new and returning customers. The teams in this group manage our ability to attract & retain new customers through various channels (meta, agentic distribution, etc.).
You will operate at the Flights Acquisition & Retention group level, driving alignment and release coordination across the teams responsible for flight acquisition channels, customer deals and post booking experience. You will ensure releases ship with quality, transparency, and operational readiness, while continuously evolving release processes to support agility, compliance, and scale as the Flights shopping funnel grows in complexity.
As a senior leader, you will serve as a strategic partner to Flights Engineering, Product and Commercial leaders — reducing delivery risk and giving teams the confidence to ship shopping experience improvements quickly and safely.
In this role you will get to:
Portfolio Release Planning & Coordination
Own and maintain the release calendar for the Flights Acquisition & Retention group, coordinating across product, engineering, commercial, and operations teams
Orchestrate complex, cross-functional releases spanning different areas within flights with dependencies on various downstream and upstream teams across Priceline.
Ensure releases are aligned to Flights strategic initiatives, roadmap milestones, and seasonal travel demand peaks (e.g., holiday and summer travel surges).
Drive ways of working with the team - establishing processes, systems and controls as required to enable teams and manage risk. This includes how we work together with other teams.
Manage cross-team dependencies and sequencing across the Flights Acquisition & Retention group and other Flights teams (e.g., Supply, Shopping Experience, etc).
Risk, Governance & Quality Management
Identify and proactively manage risks to release quality, timing, shopping funnel stability, and rollback readiness — recognizing that shopping experience issues have an immediate, visible impact on conversion and revenue.
Partner with Engineering, Data, and InfraOps teams to establish and enforce release criteria, validation gates, governance processes, and post-release monitoring
Maintain controls required for compliance, audit, or change management, including fare display and pricing-related regulatory considerations.
Cross-Team Communication & Stakeholder Alignment
Serve as the central point of coordination for Flights Acquisition & Retention group; coordinating releases, connecting Product, Engineering, Commercial, Analytics, and other teams (Finance, Customer Care, Security, Legal, and Operations stakeholders)
Communicate release scope, timelines, dependencies, risks, and critical incidents to Flights leadership and partner teams.
Partner with Product Managers and Engineering leaders to develop release communications, change advisories, and rollout strategies for launches.
Drive alignment across Flight teams operating within the Product Operating Model (POM), ensuring transparency and accountability.
Process Improvement & Automation
Continuously improve release management processes, tooling, and reporting to support faster, safer, and more predictable shopping experience releases.
Partner with DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering teams to advance CI/CD pipelines, release automation, feature flagging, and model deployment processes for search, pricing, and ranking systems.
Support the group’s transition toward continuous delivery and modern platform engineering practices for flight shopping and AI/ML-driven personalization.
Develop scalable release frameworks and governance models that can extend across the broader Flights portfolio.
Metrics & Post-Release Analysis
Define, track, and report on release health metrics, including:
Deployment frequency
Failed deployments
Change lead time
Change failure rate
Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)
Funnel and conversion metrics
New Customer Acquisition metrics
Data quality/reliability metrics (e.g., search latency, availability accuracy)
Facilitate release retrospectives and drive continuous improvement initiatives across Flights Shopping Experience teams.
Assess the operational, business, and customer impact of major acquisition & retention releases, including conversion, new customer growth and booking-funnel effects
Who you are:
7+ years of experience in Agile delivery, Technical Program Management, Release Management, or Portfolio Management, with significant experience supporting large-scale e-commerce shopping organizations.
Deep understanding of how release management integrates into Product Operating Models (POMs) and modern iterative delivery frameworks.
Experience leading complex, cross-functional release planning across search, shopping, pricing, personalization/ML, or experimentation systems, ideally within travel, e-commerce, or another high-volume consumer shopping environment.
Familiarity with growing new customers via various channels (i.e. Meta)
Fluent in Agile methodologies and frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, and continuous delivery practices.
Proven ability to coordinate dependencies across multiple teams while balancing delivery speed with shopping funnel stability and operational excellence.
Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence leaders across Product, Engineering, Business, and Operations.
A proactive problem solver who identifies risks and opportunities early and makes sound decisions with incomplete information.
A detail-oriented operator who thrives in fast-paced environments and can manage multiple competing p