Release Lead II

The Project Manager / Release Lead is responsible for planning, coordinating, and overseeing the successful delivery of software releases and associated projects across multiple environments. This role serves as the primary liaison between technical teams, project stakeholders, and business partners to ensure releases and projects are delivered on time, within scope, and with minimal operational risk.

The ideal candidate combines strong project management capabilities with hands-on technical knowledge, enabling them to effectively manage release processes, troubleshoot deployment issues, and collaborate with development teams throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

Specific Responsibilities and Deliverables: Release & Project Planning

• Develop and maintain release schedules, deployment calendars, and release plans.
• Leverage established project management and/or agile practices to deliver concurrent small and medium-size projects, using appropriate tools and methods to organize the work and priorities of an individual, group, or team.
• Support budgeting, resource planning, and prioritization efforts.
• Coordinate testing, implementation, training, and transition-to-support activities.

Coordination & Governance

• Coordinate release and project activities across development, testing, infrastructure, operations, and business teams.
• Facilitate release readiness reviews, go/no-go meeting, and post-release retrospectives.
• Ensure adherence to release management policies, change management processes, and governance requirements.
• Ensure releases meet compliance, security review, and audit trail requirements as part of the governance model.
• Identify, assess, and mitigate release-related risks and dependencies.
• Monitor release performance and drive continuous improvement, identifying and implementing process improvements within the IT Project team or work groups associated with the project. Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools, and architecture to IT management for use on new projects.

Reporting & Stakeholder Communication

• Regularly capture activity and progress on work and prepare charts (e.g., Gantt or burndown) and other appropriate reporting for business and project stakeholders, tailoring updates to different audience levels.
• Act as the primary point of contact for release-related communications, building strong relationships with business stakeholders, product owners, vendors, and technical teams.
• Ensure alignment between business priorities and release schedules; coordinate third-party vendor activities impacting release timelines.
• Hold team members accountable for their commitments, proactively manage risks, and remove impediments to their work.

Technical Leadership & Development Support

• Collaborate with development teams to understand application architecture, deployment requirements, and technical dependencies.
• Review deployment scripts, CI/CD pipelines, and release automation processes.
• Support troubleshooting efforts during deployments as needed, without formal incident-command authority.
• Identify opportunities to improve release efficiency through automation and DevOps practices.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of leadership experience in Release Management, Project Management, Software Development, or a related technical role.
• Experience managing software releases in Agile and/or DevOps environments.
• Working knowledge of software development lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD practices and deployment automation.
• Experience with version control systems such as Git.
• Demonstrated project management experience leading cross-functional initiatives.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and organizational skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities., * PMP, PRINCE2, Agile, Scrum Master, or ITIL certification.
• Experience with Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, ServiceNow, or similar platforms.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure or AWS.
• Knowledge of infrastructure, networking, and application support processes.
• Experience supporting enterprise-scale releases in a regulated or complex environment, including compliance and audit requirements.
• Proficiency in scripting or development languages such as PowerShell, Python, C#, Java, or JavaScript.

Key Competencies

• Release Planning & Coordination

• Project Management

• Risk & Dependency Management

• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

• Agile & DevOps Practices

• Change Management & Compliance

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Technical Problem Solving

• Process Improvement

• Leadership & Communication

Success Measures

• Successful on-time delivery of releases and projects.

• Minimal release-related production incidents.

• Improved deployment efficiency through automation.

• High stakeholder satisfaction and communication effectiveness.

• Accurate project reporting and risk management.

• Continuous improvement of release and deployment processes.