Release Manager

Job Title: Release Manager

This is a Project Management position in the Professional Services organization. The primary focus of the position is to manage multiple releases and patches through the later phases of the software development lifecycle. The role requires a great deal of cross organization interaction, communication and coordination in addition to driving team compliance with standards and approval processes.
*Act as liaison with various groups and departments (e.g., Sales, Product Management, Product Engineering, Quality Services, Operations) *Coordinate & negotiate cross-departmental program activities, schedules and changes across teams of individual stakeholders and organizations *Facilitate issue resolution *Establish and maintain a risk management plan *Ability/initiative to define and evolve processes to ensure continuous improvement. Process-focused but not bureaucratic. Metrics-focused.
Schedule Management *Implement, coordinate, and monitor release schedule, issue tracking, risk profiles between teams and releases.
*Identify activities that must be performed to produce program deliverables
*Identify, manage and document dependencies
*Control changes to program schedule and communicate as necessary
*Drive completion of deliverables to program and escalate issues to insure timely delivery of releases and product patches
*Set and enforce standards for high quality release procedures
Release and Patch Management
*Own the process of transitioning software development to operations in a high availability production environment
*Patch Manager and Sustaining Engineering Manager responsible for validating builds, authoring, reviewing, and or modifying release notes, and driving build updates
*Coordinate code drops with other teams (i.e., product engineering)
*Review all releases and patches for proper testing and documentation prior to production deployment.
Communication Management *Act as the focal point for release communications *Conduct on-going release meetings *Work with the support manger and the customer to coordinate release logistics *Gather & disseminate release and product information on a weekly basis (Weekly program status report) *Represent department in internal and external release management meetings *Maintain architectural-level technical knowledge of Qpass software and systems.
Requirements *2+ years software development industry experience as a developer, tester, project manager, or program manager. Participant and key player in end-to-end software development lifecycle.
*1+ year experience with advanced enterprise configuration management concepts (branching, merging, builds, etc) *1+ year experience with environment management processes (certification, deployment) *Action oriented. Possess a strong bias for action; takes it personally when an issue is unresolved. Holds others accountable to be action-orientation as well.
*Flawless attention to detail.
*Able to work with continuously shifting priorities. Able to keep multiple milestones for multiple projects in head to facilitate conflicting project priorities and decision-making.
*Capable of identifying and resolving issues at a detailed technical level; capable of undertaking any level of work to see that a project or task gets completed.
*Effective verbal and written communication skills.
*Master of cross-team communication. Drives cross-functional process improvement.
*Sensitive to the needs of other teams and stakeholders working with them to address key concerns.
*Ability/initiative to define and evolve processes to ensure continuous improvement. Process-focused but not bureaucratic. Metrics-focused.
*Enabler – looks for ways to meet needs of others on team to make their lives easier.
Education, Certifications, Training Required *Bachelor degree in information systems, computer science, or related discipline. Prefer PMI and/or ITIL, familiar with SAS70 or SOX.

*On call duties for emergencies outside normal business hours will be required for this position.