Release Manager

Our client is a leading Clothing manufacturer who is seeking a Release Manager who is responsible for the efficient day to day operation and improvement of the team. The resource will also play a hands-on role in coordinating (and sometimes performing) release engineering and path-to-production functions for production changes, releases, new projects and operational environments.

The Release Manager will work closely with geographically distributed engineers, release management, website/tooling development, QA and production support teams for environments, deployments, automation and enforcing good release practices. They will be responsible for the efficient day to day operation and improvement of the team. The candidate will also play a hands-on role in coordinating (and sometimes performing) release engineering and path-to-production functions for production changes, releases, new projects and operational environments. They will work closely with geographically distributed engineers, release management, website/tooling development, QA and production support teams for environments, deployments, automation and enforcing good release practices.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Supervise the release team made up of employees and contractors in their day to day function, work prioritization, availability and performance.

- Manage project/release resources, schedules and allocations across a wide range of systems and efforts as well as spill-over work in the common pool.
- Keep managers/stakeholders proactively informed of delivery progress and task status.
- Forecast, plan and execute training for new technologies flowing into the group.
- Continuously drive for automation and process improvement in the team to increase efficiency, reliability, speed of service, while cutting down operational cost.
- Provide leadership and guidance as the SME on release engineering processes and functions.
- Coordinate the hand-off to/from the offshore team for seamless 24/7 operations.
- Work with project delivery teams to manage infrastructure changes.
- Help project teams understand operational needs and requirements early in their planning.
- Drive requirements into and set acceptance criteria for the DeliveryTeam.
- Define, measure and track a standard set of metrics and KPIs to:
- measure historic and current activities to provide baseline metrics
- monitor improvements in the team and delivery process - Provision, maintain, support, deploy to several test and production-like environments in a timely manner for multiple concurrent releases.

QUALIFICATIONS:

- Strong resource management experience in a rapid environment with overlapping project cycles and shifting priorities.
- Successful experience working in cross-functional, multi-location teams.
- Strong release tooling and operations automation background. Proven ability to articulate requirements in this space.
- Experience defining detailed metrics to measure and summarize results.
- Solid understanding and practical experience of SDLC in release engineering functions and the DevOps philosophy.

Required Technical/Management Skills

- BA/BS degree in Computer Science, or equivalent work experience.
- 2+ years in the resource supervision of Software Engineering teams, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
- 3+ years in the work management of a fast paced Release Engineering team.
- 5+ years in a UNIX/Linux Release Engineering role, including
- Web server technologies
- Isolating build/deployment issues versus code/data issues
- Supporting multi-faceted eCommerce static and cloud environment - 2+ years of hands on Enterprise Object Oriented development (Java/Ruby preferred)

Soft Skills

- Strong relationship and consensus building skills in a Matrix environment.
- Excellent customer service attitude, communication skills (written and verbal), and interpersonal skills.
- Patience and perseverance in following best practices for process improvements.
- Ability to plan long-term, but execute goals in tangible short-term incrementals.
- Ability to work under pressure and in high stress situations with a calm demeanor.