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Release Manager Lead - Job DescriptionWe are seeking an experienced Release Manager Lead to oversee the release management function for an large customer managed services project. This role will lead and manage a small team of Release Managers responsible for coordinating software, infrastructure, and service releases, including Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity Management (BCM) planning and execution. The successful candidate will ensure quality releases, alignment with change and configuration management processes, and minimize risk to live services.Key ResponsibilitiesFrom a high-level view, you will spend most of your time planning, testing, tracking, release, deployment, communication, and risk management. Below are some details:Team Leadership & ManagementLead, coach, and support Release Managers, ensuring consistent release practices and team development.Oversee workload allocation, performance reviews, and training needs for the release team.Drive collaboration and alignment across release, change, and incident management functions.Release Management OversightGovern and coordinate end-to-end release planning and execution for SGN managed services, including software updates, infrastructure changes, and service rollouts.Maintain release schedules, ensuring alignment with project timelines and stakeholder expectations.Ensure all releases follow established quality gates, risk assessments, and approvals.Disaster Recovery & BCM ActivitiesOversee planning, coordination, and execution of scheduled Disaster Recovery (DR) drills and activities.Work closely with BCM teams to ensure DR readiness, alignment with business continuity objectives, and compliance with organizational policies.Manage lessons learned post-DR activities, implement improvements, and report on DR effectiveness.Process Improvement & GovernanceDefine, improve, and enforce release management processes, tools, and standards.Track KPIs and metrics related to release success, incident impact, and compliance.Ensure alignment with ITIL practices, change control, and configuration management.Stakeholder CommunicationAct as the point of contact for escalations related to release and DR activities.Provide regular updates and reports to senior leadership, project managers, and service owners.Facilitate release readiness meetings and post-implementation reviews.Other responsibilities:The Release Manager reports to the manager in the Release Management team. Release Manager, in DevOps, is responsible for scheduling, planning, and controlling the software`s development and delivery process.As a Release Manager, you will be responsible for handling the DevOps team to make them deliver the services on time and will manage both IT operations and developers.You will be responsible for the Release Management lifecycle that involves the stages such as scheduling the release, coordinating between teams, and deployment of release as per the schedule and within budget.As a DevOps Release Manager, you will have to coordinate the release the software after completing the testing stage and deployment stage, and work closely with the application development team, testing team, and production team. You will have to maintain proper coordination between these teams to update the project related information.Responsible to provide input and receiving output from Clients Project Management Office/ PM to Schedule project, support and maintenance releases, and report any movement to the schedule.Coordinating project, support and maintenance releases, assessing where code needs to be merged, releases separated.Adhere to the correct workflow for releases and identify & manage all related outage communications via IT Operations.Responsible to book the relevant test resources(application support teams, project teams or test services);Working with third party product vendors for the applications and Infrastructure and collating product upgrade details and defining a plan in coordination with client stakeholders to manage those Project/ BAU changes with client.Responsible to resolve release problems, ensure change approvals received, ensure resource bookings and necessary release notes availability.Collate technical deployment plans from release notes from all technical teamsResponsible for the correct version of code are deployed to the right environmentsYou need to define the strategic usage of release management tools to manage the revenue for the release.Overall, you will be concerned with planning, testing, tracking, release, deployment, communication, and risk management.Desired ExperienceAs the role of a Release Manager is quite competent, so you need to master or at least be an expert in some of the key technical skills. In addition to that, some soft skills are also required to make the communication easier and the coordination between different teams to go easy.B. Tech in Computer Science or an equivalent degreeService Delivery & ITSM ExperienceKnowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI \ CD) pipelinesExperience in working with DevOps and Agile methodologiesWorking knowledge of Software Development LifecycleTeam management skillsExperience in the use of Application Release Automation tools such as Jenkins, Puppet Enterprise, Build master, and Visual Studio Release Management is a bonusKnowledge of traditional agile methodologies, including Scrum, Waterfall, or KanbanGood understanding of application infrastructure, system architecture, and operating systemSoft Skills:Excellent communication skillsLeadership skillsProject management skills with knowledge of presentationProblem-solving and analytics skillsTeam and time management skills
