Release Manager - IT Automation

Roles & Responsibilities :

- Driving effective release framework and governance with a continuous delivery mindset across multiple teams and geographies.

- Manage all change activities from planning through testing, to deployment.

- Develop risk management and contingency planning for releases of any size.

- Work with Support and Operation teams to ensure operational readiness.

- Communicate effectively at multiple levels within the organization through written and verbal communication, both formal and informal.

- Drive global release cadence that defines the cycles, structures, and required oversight to deliver products and experiences to production.

- Define and publish key metrics that demonstrate the effectiveness of releases as well as areas of improvement for the Release management framework.

- Partner closely and continually with product, program, quality, engineering, support, and release teams to align on scope, release cadence, delivery and support requirements.

- Partner with the business and IT stakeholders to drive release scheduling decisions.

- Provide status reports to key internal/external stakeholders.

- Manage go/no-go, checkpoint, and retrospective meetings with release stakeholders.

- Participate in Capability Stand Ups and PI Planning sessions to determine and plan for upcoming release scope.

- Identify and drive retrospective items to completion.

Experience & Skills Fitment :

- Bachelors degree in technology, business, engineering, or a related field; 2+ additional years of professional experience in lieu of a degree.

- A deep understanding and practical application of standard release process(s), agile methodologies, and technical capabilities (including agile - lean, continuous delivery, SAFe, ITIL).

- Experience working with teams development and deployment automation tools in the software development and deployment lifecycle.

- Strong relationship-building skills and experience working closely with leaders and cross-functional partners to deliver key strategic initiatives.

- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to motivate and influence others, negotiate during situational conflict, and establish the best forward path in the face of competing points of view.

- Ability to deal with ambiguity and work in a dynamic, results-oriented matrixed environment.

Experience with tools such as JIRA, Confluence, ServiceNow :

- Demonstrable experience operating in a complex, federated global organization with a geographically dispersed team.

- Experience at developing risk management and contingency plans for production changes.

- Successful track record of applying operational readiness techniques to complex feature implementations.

- Successful track record of partnership across organizations to build trust and achieve shared goals.

- Good communications and presentation skills. Able to communicate sophisticated and technical issues effectively and concisely to leadership.

- High professional standards and expectations for self and others.

- Professional stature and gravitas to collaborate with and influence team members with credibility and confidence.