Transition Manager

Job Description – Transition Manager

Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience: 10+ Years
Language Requirement: Bilingual – English & French (Mandatory)

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Transition Manager to lead the mobilization and safe transition of enterprise IT services from an incumbent service provider into a stable, fully operational steady-state environment.

The Transition Manager will own the complete transition lifecycle, including mobilization, knowledge transfer, shadowing, service rehearsals, readiness assessments, go/no-go gates, cutover, stabilization, and formal transition closure.

Following cutover, the role will lead the 90-day stabilization period, ensuring service performance, operational readiness, issue remediation, and achievement of agreed exit criteria.

The ideal candidate will have 10+ years of IT service transition experience, preferably involving large-scale, multi-site End User Computing (EUC) or managed services environments.

Professional fluency in both English and French is mandatory for this position.

Key Responsibilities

• Transition Planning: Own the end-to-end transition plan, detailed Gantt schedule, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, and stage gates.
• Mobilization & Kickoff: Lead transition mobilization, stakeholder alignment, governance setup, resource onboarding, and formal kickoff activities.
• Knowledge Transfer: Plan and manage structured knowledge transfer and shadowing activities with incumbent and retained teams.
• Service Rehearsal: Design, coordinate, and execute service rehearsals, operational readiness testing, and cutover simulations.
• Go/No-Go Governance: Define readiness criteria, prepare supporting evidence, conduct gate reviews, and secure client approval for service commencement.
• Cutover Management: Lead production cutover activities while coordinating technical, operational, client, incumbent, and third-party teams.
• Stabilization: Manage the 90-day post-transition stabilization period, including remediation, performance monitoring, and service recovery.
• Exit Criteria: Define, track, evidence, and obtain approval for achievement of agreed stabilization and transition exit criteria.
• Risk & Dependency Management: Identify and mitigate transition risks associated with incumbent attrition, knowledge gaps, dependencies, resources, and operational readiness.
• Documentation: Ensure runbooks, SOPs, operational procedures, knowledge articles, and operations manuals are completed, validated, and handed over.
• Stakeholder Management: Provide clear transition reporting and maintain effective communication with client executives, delivery teams, and other stakeholders.

Required Skills & Competencies

• 10+ years of relevant IT Transition / Service Transition / Program Management experience.
• Bilingual English & French – Mandatory, with professional written and spoken proficiency in both languages.
• Transition Frameworks: Proven experience managing structured EUC or IT managed-services transitions across large, multi-site environments.
• Incumbent Transition Management: Experience extracting and validating operational knowledge from departing/incumbent service providers under strict timelines.
• Knowledge Transfer: Strong experience designing and managing knowledge-transfer, shadow, reverse-shadow, and operational handover programs.
• Service Readiness: Ability to define measurable readiness criteria, stage gates, go/no-go requirements, and transition exit criteria.
• Cutover & Stabilization: Proven experience managing complex service cutovers followed by structured hypercare/stabilization periods.
• Operational Knowledge: Working knowledge of Service Desk, Field Services, Endpoint Engineering, EUC, and related IT support operations.
• Risk Management: Strong ability to identify, track, mitigate, and escalate transition risks, issues, dependencies, and knowledge gaps.
• Stakeholder Leadership: Executive-level communication and credibility when managing high-risk or business-critical service transitions.
• Planning & Tools: Strong working experience with Microsoft Project, ServiceNow, knowledge-management platforms, and transition reporting tools.
• Strong program management, governance, documentation, communication, negotiation, and problem-solving capabilities.

Preferred Certifications

• ITIL 4
• PMP or PRINCE2 certification is preferred.

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will be a senior transition professional capable of taking ownership of a complex, business-critical service transition from mobilization through steady state.

Candidates should have strong practical experience across transition planning + incumbent knowledge transfer + service readiness + go/no-go governance + cutover + stabilization + operational handover.

The individual must be comfortable coordinating multiple technical and operational workstreams while maintaining clear governance, documentation, risk control, and executive stakeholder communication.

Important: This position is based in Montreal, Canada, and professional proficiency in both English and French is mandatory.

Pay: $60,300.00-$166,000.00 per year

Work Location: In person