Release Engineer

Release Management is the focal point for planning and communicating software releases. The Release Engineer’s responsibilities will include planning, developing, coordinating, and leading software release activities with application and support teams beginning early in the SDLC. This person will lead the successful deployment of software releases from development all the way through to a live production environment. The Release Engineer will act as the gatekeeper in facilitating that all agreed entry/exit criteria and process checkpoints are satisfactorily negotiated and received. In addition, this individual will apply proven communication and problem-solving skills to guide and assist the support groups on issues related to the testing and deployment of business-critical information and software applications. 

Work You’ll Do

• Define and formulate releases and ensure alignment to established software development processes to meet business needs.
• Define, track, and manage release content and schedules - A comprehensive plan that integrates all the inputs and outputs of release planning activities. This includes the assignment of support team and identifying dependencies.
• Lead and provide direction to all affected teams to ensure software release activities are managed and coordinated accordingly.  
• Engage with the infrastructure team to schedule and manage hotfixes.
• Track all software upgrades, interdependencies and version deprecation for vendor and internal applications.
• Schedule and facilitate release planning and status meetings to review changes to releases and/or resolve items of intense or moderate concern.
• Develop risk management mitigation (prioritization) when support teams are faced with schedule/ budget /resource constraints.
• Responsible for planning, coordinating, and leading of production readiness meetings for all software releases and secure approvals from support teams to continue with production deployment.
• Ensures and collects release specific metrics to define a quality release.
• Works across the organization to improve and enforce development, testing, release, and documentation standards.
• Ensure deliverables are completed within target timeframes and are consistently of high-quality.
• Change Management coordination and support
• Application CI on-boarding within ServiceNow, including CMDB update and maintenance
• Monthly Patching tracking for supported servers
• Work with the team to bring continuous process improvement to the Release/Change Management processes.

Qualifications:

• 5-6  years of Release Management Coordination/Engineer experience managing builds through development, QA, UAT through to Production.
• Understanding why Release Management is important- put standards in place, checkpoints, etc.
• Proven experience in overseeing the implementation of software releases to a production environment.
• Strong knowledge of system and software SDLC and leading practices and methodologies including Agile and/or ITIL frameworks
• Direct, hands-on experience with release management tools; MS Azure DevOps, JIRA or similar tool experience
• Ability to multi-task, nimbleness and highly functional within a team environment
• Must be adaptable to work in a varied, fast paced exciting, ever- changing environment
• Strong communication, interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving skills
• Been a part of the team when they were establishing and/or upgrading Release Management team or processes.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related technical field or commensurate work experience