Release Manager

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Release Manager to drive the end‑to‑end release lifecycle + QA certification across multiple products and environments.

The role requires strong coordination across engineering, QA, DevOps, and product teams, ensuring predictable, high‑quality releases. In addition, the candidate should have worked in driving QA processes and test automation, enabling them to effectively drive release quality and readiness.

Key Responsibilities

1. Release Planning & Execution

• Own and manage the complete release lifecycle—planning, scheduling, coordination, deployment, and validation

• Maintain release calendars, dependencies, and timelines

• Coordinate with development, QA, DevOps, and product teams for release readiness

• Identify and mitigate risks, blockers, and interdependencies

2. Release Governance & Quality Assurance

• Establish and enforce release governance, quality gates, and checklists

• Ensure releases meet quality standards, working closely with QA teams

• Drive Go/No‑Go decisions based on readiness criteria

• Conduct post‑release reviews to identify opportunities for improvement

• Drive/lead continuous improvement initiatives to stabilize the deployments

3. QA Collaboration & Quality Ownership

• Lead the QA teams to ensure:

• Adequate test coverage (functional, regression, integration)

• Proper defect tracking and closure before release

• Understand and support test automation efforts and their integration into CI/CD pipelines

• Ensure release readiness validation, smoke testing, and production verification

• Own certification for product releases – monthly, quarterly, etc.

4. CI/CD & Deployment Management

• Collaborate with DevOps to manage and optimize CI/CD pipelines

• Ensure smooth deployments across Dev, QA, UAT, Pre‑Prod, and Production environments

• Implement best practices for:

• Version control (Git)

• Branching strategies

• Automated deployment workflows

5. Stakeholder Communication & Alignment

• Act as the central point of contact for releases

• Communicate release status, risks, timelines, and impacts clearly to stakeholders (CSMs, customers and N7 leadership teams)

• Facilitate:

• Release planning meetings

• Go/No‑Go calls

• Retrospectives

6. Risk Management & Continuous Improvement

• Track and improve key release metrics, including:

• Deployment success rate

• Defect leakage

• Change failure rate

• Mean time to recovery (MTTR)

• Drive improvements in release predictability, automation, and quality

Key Skills & Qualifications

Technical Skills

• 10+ years of experience in Release Management.

• Strong hands-on experience with CI/CD tools such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or GitLab CI/CD.

• Solid understanding of Product Release Management and release governance.

• Familiarity with test automation frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, or similar tools.

• Experience with API testing tools, preferably Postman or RestAssured.

• Experience in managing multiple releases at the same time.

• Strong knowledge of Git, Jenkins, version control systems, deployment pipelines, and multi-environment release management.

• Knowledge of QA processes and the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) is an added advantage.

• Prior experience in product-based companies, managing release deployments, product QA certifications, and cross-functional. release coordination

• Strong understanding of Agile / Scrum methodologies

• Experience with release governance and change management processes

• Familiarity with tools like Jira / Azure Boards

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong cross‑functional collaboration and stakeholder management

• Ability to manage multiple releases in a fast‑paced environment

• Strong problem‑solving and decision‑making skills

• High ownership, accountability, and attention to detail

Success Metrics (What Good Looks Like)

• High‑quality, on‑time releases with minimal rollback incidents

• Reduced production defects and release risks

• Improved deployment stability and predictability

• Strong alignment between engineering, QA, and product teams

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

• Certifications in DevOps / Agile / ITIL / Quality Assurance

• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Understanding of automation‑driven release environments, QA processes