Release Manager - Cutover Management

About ADM:

We are one of the world's largest nutrition companies and a global leader in human and animal nutrition. We unlock the power of nature to provide nourishing quality of life by transforming crops into ingredients and solutions for foods, beverages, supplements, livestock, aquaculture, and pets.

About ADM India Hub:

At ADM, we have long recognized the strength and potential of India's talent pool, which is why we have maintained a presence in the country for more than 25 years. Building on this foundation, we have now established ADM India Hub, our first GCC in India.

At ADM India Hub, we are hiring for IT and finance roles across diverse technology and business functions. We stand at the intersection of global expertise and local excellence, enabling us to drive innovation and support our larger purpose of unlocking the power of nature to enrich quality of life.

Release Manager:

As a member of the Global Technology Organization and a Release Manager, you are responsible for overseeing the successful planning, coordination, and execution of releases. Your role is critical in ensuring that the organization's landscape is up-to-date, stable, and compliant with industry best practices. You will work closely with various teams, including release management, environment management, administrators, development, testing, functional consultants, and project managers, to ensure a smooth and efficient release process.

Job Responsibilities:

• Define release schedules, milestones, and deliverables to meet project deadlines and business objectives for releases
• Work in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple releases simultaneously
• Perform Release Management and Cutover Management activities across various technologies, applications and platforms such as ERPs, CRM systems, Enterprise Application systems, Full-Stack applications and should learn any technology specific details relevant to Release Management and Cutover activities quickly
• Own integrated release and cutover planning for complex releases, including sequencing, dependencies, cross-functional coordination, and escalation
• Own end-to-end release readiness across application, testing, environment, security, business, and operational dependencies, release quality gates before approving movement to production
• Drive release risk and dependency management, proactively identifying conflicts, cross-product impacts, freeze-period constraints, and business-critical risks
• Partner with Environment Management to confirm environment availability, configuration readiness, refreshes, access, data readiness, and production/non-production alignment
• Manage enterprise release calendars and collision management across product families, applications, platforms, plant operations, blackout periods, major business events and system freezes
• Own release metrics to identify areas for improvement and implement corrective actions
• Drive continuous automation of release processes, including CI/CD integration, automated quality gates, deployment orchestration, release dashboards, and reduction of manual handoffs
• Exhibit ability to work both in a team environment and independently
• Should be able to work with ambiguity and bring clarity to the plan
• Stay up-to-date with technologies, industry trends, and best practices, applying relevant knowledge to enhance Release Management practices
• Drive process improvements to optimize the release management process and increase efficiency
• Maintain a positive work environment through teamwork & conflict resolution
• Expected to work occasional weekends, holidays, or a variety of shifts, when needed, to support production releases

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline or equivalent with a minimum of 5+ years of experience in IT Releases or Delivery
• Experience in large-scale implementations, releases, scheduled release such as daily, weekly, monthly quarterly, minor – across multiple technologies
• Experience in managing end-to-end enterprise releases, including release readiness, cutover, deployment, go/no-go, rollback/backout, and post-release stabilization
• Experience with release governance, controls, and audit/compliance requirements, including change approvals and evidence
• Strong experience managing release risks, dependencies, conflicts, and escalations across multiple applications, platforms, and teams.
• Experience with coordinating with teams for environment readiness and deployment across non-production and production environments
• Experience in defining and using release metrics
• Experience with Change Request creation using tools such as ServiceNow
• Ability to learn application or technology specific tools and processes relevant to Release Management quickly and own the Release Management process
• Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills, including communicating risks, readiness, and release status to IT and Business leaders
• Ability to lead cross-functional releases, and command centers during major releases and production deployment
• Knowledge of software development lifecycle including agile, and waterfall
• Working knowledge of DevOps / CI-CD concepts

Desired Qualifications:

• ITIL certifications are a plus
• Understanding of Cloud, non-Cloud, Digital applications, components, integration points among applications and teams
• Project management skills
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Working knowledge of using AI