Release Manager

The Release team member supports the planning, coordination, and execution of software releases across all environments, ensuring changes are delivered safely, predictably, and with minimal disruption to the business. As part of release governance, you will establish best practices and optimise workflow throughout the release lifecycle, from code freeze and branching through deployment, sign-off, and post-release follow-up.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate the end-to-end release process, from intake and scheduling through deployment and post-release validation.
• Maintain the release calendar and enforce code-freeze windows ahead of each release.
• Support branching strategy and versioning in line with agreed development workflows.
• Prepare and maintain the release runbook, detailing step-by-step deployment, validation, and back-out activities.
• Own the cutover plan and the rollback plan for each release, ensuring both are reviewed and agreed before go-live.
• Confirm environment readiness across Dev, Test, Pre-Prod, Hotfix, DR, and Production before deployments proceed.
• Track configuration, data, and access dependencies for each environment and escalate gaps early.
• Coordinate environment bookings and windows to avoid conflicts between concurrent workstreams.
• Raise, document, and progress change requests through the change management process.
• Represent releases at the Change Advisory Board (CAB), presenting scope, risk, and mitigation.
• Secure formal sign-off from development, testing, security, infrastructure, and business stakeholders before release.
• Drive timely follow-ups with teams to close approvals, actions, and dependencies.
• Communicate release status, risks, and timelines clearly to stakeholders.
• Prepare and present release decks to stakeholders at go/no-go and review checkpoints.
• Participate in SLA meetings, tracking release-related service commitments and reporting on adherence.
• Prepare and maintain release documentation, including release notes, deployment plans, and sign-off records.
• Maintain inventory management of release artefacts, components, versions, and environment configurations.
• Ensure an accurate audit trail of approvals, changes, and deployment outcomes.

Technical Skills and Knowledge

A working, foundational understanding of the following is expected. The candidate should be able to converse credibly with engineering teams and understand how each area affects a release.

SDLC and Testing:

• Understanding of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and common delivery models (Agile).
• Understanding of the functional test stages in the SDLC sequence — unit, integration, system, regression, and UAT — and how each gates a release.
• Security testing knowledge - penetration testing, WAF, firewall and token controls that protect a release.
• Performance testing knowledge - load and stress testing, load balancing, and scaling containers up and down to validate application performance under expected and peak load.

CI/CD and Source Control:

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated build, test, and deployment concepts.
• Working knowledge of GitHub and GitHub Actions for source control and pipelines.
• Understanding of branching, merging, tagging, and release versioning.

Cloud and Infrastructure:

• Basic understanding of AWS cloud services and how workloads are deployed and hosted.
• Awareness of the Apigee API gateway and its role in exposing and managing APIs.
• Foundational understanding of the infrastructure layer, including clusters and deployment targets.
• Awareness of tokens, credentials, and secrets management, and the importance of secure handling during deployments.

Information Security:

• Understanding of secure release practices, including obtaining security sign-off and confirming vulnerability remediation before go-live.
• Familiarity with access controls, least-privilege, and segregation of duties across release environments.
• Awareness of security scanning in the CI/CD pipeline (SAST, DAST, and dependency/vulnerability scanning) as release quality gates.
• Awareness of data protection and regulatory compliance relevant to deployments and data handling.

Skills

CI / CD, Cab, Change Management, DevOps, GitHub Actions, Release