Senior Release Manager - DevSecOps practices - Program Manager

Job Title: Senior Release Manager

Location: Remote

Employment Type: Contract-to-Hire

Duration: Initial contract with potential conversion around 6 months

Hiring Manager notes:
Want a Release Manager who understands DevSecOps concepts and can coordinate releases across engineering, infrastructure, security, data, and change management. She wants someone who can speak the language, understand dependencies/risks, and help bring discipline to automated release practices.

Overview

Lakeview is undergoing a major IT transformation focused on improving structure, delivery discipline, DevSecOps practices, and release management across enterprise IT.

The organization is seeking a Senior Release Manager to own and manage the IT release calendar, coordinate production deployments, and bring structure and standardization across software engineering, infrastructure, data, information security, and other technology teams.

The ideal candidate will have strong release management and technical program management experience, with enough technical depth to understand and communicate effectively with engineering, infrastructure, data, and security teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Own, manage, and enforce the IT release calendar across multiple technology teams.
• Coordinate production deployments across software engineering, infrastructure, data, information security, and enterprise IT groups.
• Help align teams around a structured release cadence, with the goal of improving visibility, predictability, and coordination around production releases.
• Support the organization s move toward a more structured two-week sprint and release model.
• Partner closely with Scrum Masters, technical leads, IT leadership, and delivery teams to coordinate release readiness across multiple workstreams.
• Serve as a Scrum of Scrums style coordinator for release-related activities across agile teams.
• Ensure production releases have the appropriate approvals, infrastructure readiness, change approvals, testing signoffs, security considerations, and deployment coordination completed before release.
• Work with the Change Approval Board / change approval process to ensure releases are properly reviewed, approved, and ready for production.
• Identify, communicate, and escalate release risks, blockers, conflicts, and dependencies.
• Help coordinate competing deployment priorities, including project releases, operational work, infrastructure updates, and security/vulnerability remediation.
• Bring structure, discipline, and best practices to an evolving release environment.
• Support the broader DevSecOps transformation, including improved automation, infrastructure-as-code practices, deployment discipline, and release standardization.
• Act as an ambassador for release management best practices.
• Coach, train, and guide teams through new release processes and ways of working.
• Partner with IT leadership to improve current release management processes, reduce redundancy, and increase operational efficiency.

Required Experience

• Senior-level experience in release management, release engineering, technical program management, or a similar role supporting enterprise IT deployments.
• Strong experience managing release calendars and coordinating production deployments across multiple technical teams.
• Experience working in agile environments with Scrum Masters, technical leads, product teams, project teams, and cross-functional delivery groups.
• Strong understanding of DevSecOps concepts, CI/CD practices, software delivery lifecycle, and modern deployment practices.
• Ability to communicate effectively with technical teams across software engineering, infrastructure, data, information security, and operations.
• Experience supporting or coordinating releases involving tools and environments such as Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub, cloud platforms, and change management processes.
• Experience working with change approval boards, production readiness reviews, release approvals, risk escalation, and deployment coordination.
• Strong program/project management skills, including dependency management, risk management, prioritization, stakeholder communication, and cross-team alignment.
• Ability to bring structure and standardization to a fast-moving, evolving, and sometimes chaotic environment.
• Strong coaching, facilitation, and communication skills.

Technical Skills / Tools

• Jira
• Azure DevOps
• GitHub
• CI/CD concepts
• DevSecOps practices
• Infrastructure-as-Code concepts
• Cloud infrastructure exposure, preferably AWS or similar platform
• Change management / release approval processes
• Agile delivery frameworks
• Production deployment coordination

Preferred Experience

• Experience helping an organization build or mature release management processes from the ground up.
• Experience working in a transformation environment where processes, tools, and roles are still being defined.
• Experience supporting enterprise-wide release calendars across multiple IT domains.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Terraform or similar.
• Experience in highly regulated environments such as financial services, mortgage, banking, or insurance.
• Experience working with distributed teams across multiple U.S. time zones.
• Prior experience as a Release Manager, Release Train Engineer, Agile Coach, Technical Program Manager, or senior Scrum of Scrums lead.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Senior release management professional who can bring order, discipline, and structure to a highly active IT environment.
• Technical enough to understand what engineering, infrastructure, data, and security teams need, without needing to be hands-on coding or building pipelines.
• Strong core skills in release orchestration, program management, stakeholder coordination, and cross-functional communication.
• Comfortable operating in a transformation environment where processes, tools, and roles are still being defined.
• Flexible, patient, structured, and able to work with different personalities and different ways of working.
• Calm and steady presence with the ability to coach teams through change.
• Able to enforce discipline around releases while remaining collaborative and adaptable.
• Comfortable acting as both a driver and a teacher as the organization matures its release management and DevSecOps practices.