Senior Release Manager/Mainframe or Credit Cards

Introduction: The Senior Release Manager/Mainframe or Credit Cards will be responsible for owning the release lifecycle end-to-end, driving release governance, facilitating cross-functional coordination, managing release calendars and cadence, leading Go/No-Go decisions, identifying and mitigating release risks, driving continuous improvement, managing escalations, partnering with Test Engineering, and maintaining release documentation.

Responsibilities:

• Own the release lifecycle end-to-end — from planning and scheduling through deployment, validation, and post-release monitoring.
• Drive release governance — establish and enforce release readiness criteria, entry/exit gates, change management standards, and rollback procedures.
• Facilitate cross-functional coordination — act as the central point of contact across Development, Testing, Infrastructure, Production Support, and Business stakeholders.
• Manage release calendars and cadence — maintain a structured release schedule, manage competing priorities, and ensure releases are sequenced to minimize risk and maximize throughput.
• Lead Go/No-Go decisions — aggregate test results, defect metrics, environment readiness, and stakeholder sign-offs.
• Identify and mitigate release risks — proactively surface blockers, dependency conflicts, environment issues, and resource constraints.
• Drive continuous improvement — conduct release retrospectives, track release health metrics, and implement process improvements.
• Manage escalations — serve as the escalation point for release-related issues.
• Partner with Test Engineering — ensure automation gates, regression results, and defect metrics are integrated into the release decision framework.
• Maintain release documentation — ensure release notes, deployment runbooks, configuration changes, and audit trails are complete and accessible.

Requirements:

Experience:

• Minimum 10 years of hands-on Release Management experience in large-scale, mission-critical environments — preferably in payments, card processing, or financial services.
• Proven track record of managing releases across distributed systems, mainframe platforms, and modern application stacks.
• Experience managing releases in environments with high transaction volumes and zero-downtime expectations.

Technical Knowledge:

• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release orchestration tools.
• Familiarity with card authorization flows, payment networks (Visa/Mastercard), and transaction processing systems is a strong plus.
• Working knowledge of test management tools and defect tracking systems.
• Understanding of environment management, configuration management, and infrastructure dependencies.

Leadership & Soft Skills:

• Exceptional facilitator — able to drive alignment across multiple teams, resolve conflicts, and keep meetings focused and outcome-driven.
• Go-get attitude — proactive, resourceful, and relentless in removing blockers and driving releases to completion.
• Strong communicator — able to translate technical release details into clear, concise updates for leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• Calm under pressure — comfortable making decisions in high-stakes, time-sensitive situations.
• Metrics-driven mindset — uses data to drive decisions and continuous improvement.

Education:

• Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field.
• ITIL, PMP, or SAFe certifications are a plus.