Release Manager

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Arizona.

📋 Description

• Implement Standard and Limited audience-scoped releases, which includes configuring and verifying audience targeting.

• Carry out approved hotfixes by creating branches, deploying changes, and finalizing releases.

• Establish rollback strategies for each release type, make technical decisions regarding deployment failures, and execute rollbacks when necessary.

• Take ownership of both technical and business go/no-go decisions for grouped releases, including Release Readiness and Milestone Reviews.

• Evaluate shippability, dependencies, migration readiness, business preparedness, technical coupling, and constraints related to deployment order.

• Manage non-standard releases, which consist of separate migrations, two-phase deployments, and sequencing schema changes in advance of dependent code.

• Create a release manifest for each release that encompasses contents, teams, commits, migrations, and configuration changes.

• Uphold practices related to branching, merging, squashing, cherry-picking, release branching, tagging, and version discipline across repositories.

• Control the contents of release branches after they are cut to avoid drift, orphaned work, and prolonged unmerged tasks.

• Maintain the known state, availability, scheduling, data refresh, and configuration parity for Devtest, Acceptance, Beta, and Production environments.

• Manage the end-to-end build-promotion and deployment pipeline, minimize manual processes, and ensure successful deployments.

• Track deploy-pending and validation statuses while reporting on release frequency, cycle time, failed deployment rates, rollback rates, hotfix rates, and the ratio of hotfixes to scheduled releases.

• Conduct retrospectives for any failed or rolled-back releases and keep release runbooks and documentation updated.

• Generate and preserve change-control records for every production push, including details on changes, approvals, validations, timing, and rollback strategies.

• Act as the release history system of record for security, compliance, and customer audit purposes.

• Extract cut dates and code-freeze periods from the release calendar provided by the Technical Delivery Manager, and communicate and enforce these dates.

• Relay release details and schedules to Sales, Customer Support, leadership, and other relevant stakeholders.

• Inform teams and stakeholders in real time about the initiation, completion, and failures of deployments.

• Coordinate release dependencies across teams prior to cut.

⛳️ Requirements

• Must be a U.S. citizen and a full-time resident of the U.S.

• Willingness to work off-hours for releases; most releases occur outside regular business hours and require dependable presence.

• Strong proficiency in Git, including branching strategies, merges and squashes, cherry-picking, tagging, and Git workflows.

• Technical knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, containers and images, build artifacts, frontend and backend systems, deployment architecture, and MySQL concepts including migrations, indexes, and the impacts of database changes.

• Demonstrated release management experience in a SaaS environment, particularly managing multiple concurrent releases across cross-functional teams.

• Exceptional project and process management skills, including scope tracking, managing dependencies, enforcing process at gates, and designing processes when none exist.

• Strong communication and documentation abilities, working collaboratively with Engineering, QA, Product, and Customer Support teams.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Previous experience in software engineering, engineering management, Agile/Scrum/Ops, or database management is preferred.

• Familiarity with AWS is preferred.

• Experience in regulated industries for release management, including HIPAA, SOC 2, or FedRAMP change control, is preferred.

• Experience with zero-downtime deployment and database migration is preferred.

• Experience with feature flags or progressive delivery is preferred.

• Experience in scripting and automation, along with familiarity with defect tracking and configuration management tools, is preferred.

🏝️ Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare coverage.

• Flexible work hours and remote work options.

• Opportunities for professional development and continuous learning.

• Collaborative and inclusive work environment.

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.