Senior Test

Senior Test & Release Lead Manager – Financial Services / Digital Innovation (DLT) - Paris or Brussels

Contract Type: Freelance / Contract

Industry: Banking, Financial Services, Capital Markets & Digital Assets

Technology Environment: Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)

About the Opportunity

We are seeking an experienced Senior Test & Release Manager to join an innovative technology division within a leading international financial market infrastructure organisation.

This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the development and delivery of next-generation financial technology platforms, including solutions leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), cloud technologies and API-driven architectures.

Working within a fast-paced Agile environment, you will take ownership of the end-to-end testing and release management lifecycle, ensuring that complex technology solutions are delivered to the highest quality standards and deployed safely into production.

The successful candidate will combine strong test management expertise with proven release management experience, coordinating multiple technical teams, business stakeholders and external partners.

You do not need to be a blockchain specialist, but an interest in emerging technologies and digital financial infrastructure will be highly advantageous.

Key Responsibilities

• Define, develop and maintain comprehensive test strategies covering functional and non-functional testing.
• Establish testing standards, quality governance frameworks and clear entry and exit criteria.
• Lead the planning and coordination of System Integration Testing (SIT), End-to-End Testing (E2E), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), regression testing and non-functional testing.
• Ensure test coverage aligns with business requirements, technical specifications and acceptance criteria.
• Identify quality risks early and implement appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Coordinate testing activities across multiple applications, environments, delivery teams and external partners.
• Manage defect identification, triage, prioritisation, resolution and reporting.
• Produce quality dashboards, test progress reports and test completion assessments.
• Drive improvements in test automation, continuous testing and overall quality assurance processes.

Release Management & Production Deployment

• Own and coordinate the end-to-end release management lifecycle.
• Develop and maintain integrated release plans, deployment schedules and release calendars.
• Coordinate release dependencies across engineering, infrastructure, operations, security and business teams.
• Lead release readiness assessments and facilitate go/no-go decision-making.
• Ensure releases meet agreed quality standards, acceptance criteria and operational requirements.
• Oversee deployment planning, implementation activities, rollback strategies and contingency arrangements.
• Manage release risks, issues and dependencies, ensuring timely escalation and resolution.
• Coordinate production deployments and ensure effective communication with all relevant stakeholders.
• Conduct post-implementation reviews and identify opportunities to improve release processes and deployment reliability.
• Work closely with Agile delivery teams, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, developers and DevOps engineers.
• Support the integration of automated testing within CI/CD pipelines.
• Promote continuous testing, early defect detection and quality-focused delivery practices.
• Identify opportunities to improve release frequency, testing efficiency and deployment predictability.
• Support the adoption of modern testing tools, automation frameworks and DevOps practices.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of software delivery processes, governance and tooling.

Stakeholder & Delivery Coordination

• Act as the central point of coordination for testing, quality assurance and release activities.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, architecture, infrastructure, operations, security and risk teams.
• Coordinate testing and deployment activities involving external technology vendors and delivery partners.
• Communicate testing progress, release readiness, quality risks and delivery dependencies to senior stakeholders.
• Ensure effective governance, documentation and reporting throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Support business and technology teams in making informed, risk-based release decisions.

We are looking for candidates who can demonstrate:

• Proven experience as a Senior Test Manager, Test & Release Manager, Q