Release Manager

About GSPANN
Headquartered in Milpitas, California (U.S.A.), GSPANN provides consulting and IT services to global clients, ranging from mid-size to Fortune 500 companies. With our experience in retail, high-technology, and manufacturing, we help our clients to transform and deliver business value by optimizing their IT capabilities, practices, and operations. Counting on our ten offices, including four global delivery centers, and approximately 1800 employees globally, we offer the intimacy of a boutique consultancy with capabilities of a large IT services firm.

Role: Release Manager
Location: San Francisco, CA (4 Days Onsite)
Duration: Long Term

Description:
Build and manage various IT applications release and production schedules. Lead merge strategies and align cross-channel projects.

Specific Responsibilities

• Managing the various schedules release, production changes, project timelines, etc.
• Providing daily metrics/status for environment and project health (Dashboards or other KPI delivery methods).
• Verifying gate completion for projects with PCI/Sox implications (checklist).
• Coordinating projects into existing test environments/maintaining environment schedules
• Building Release schedules and deployment plans to manager and implement a release.
• Experience in Retail/Ecommerce domain is required.
• Coordinating with project/application & TDS to ensure 3rd party integrations are configured & tested according to project/release schedules.
• Working with projects, engineering and QA to define upcoming environment requirements and specifications
• Determining & coordinating data requirements and dependencies fr upcoming projects
• Fundamental knowledge of applications, systems and integration points.
• Work with Engineering/Architects to assess release milestone and adapt/grow them as required over time.
• Work with Engineering & Project Management (PM) to define inter dependencies in deployment plans
• Define and enforce entry criteria for Production. Acting as a gate
• Cross channel involvement in aligning projects
• Manage branching & merge strategies across development initiatives and phased releases
• Implement tactical improvements for version & configuration management, build/release tools and processes
• Lead release planning across organization with consideration of business events, maintenance windows and production support changes
• Lead activities to ensure test environments are configured with correct components & integrations across multiple applications.
• Establish and drive release strategy and process with application/systems engineering and operations
• Responsible for identifying and management of delivery automation initiatives
• Develop expertise within the team
• Develops release approaches across multiple applications, systems, components and services for complex or multiple domains
• Works closely with software & build engineers, architects, QA and project teams to define release requirements, including code dependencies & conflicts, version control, test strategies and deployment schedules.
• Escalation point for critical release conflicts and/or issues
• Ability to develop merge plans of large, complex systems across minor/major release schedules
• Drives issue resolution and risk assessment for multiple project deliveries being deployed within a single release or across multiple release.
• Manages issues with conflicting interests and identifies compromises
• Drives decisions for coordinating components/features and co-dependencies from various product deliverables that must come together to work as integrated release package
• Strong sense of urgency with ability to assess & deliver results under pressure
• Sets quarterly and annual release plans that involves strategic initiatives with high business impact
• Strong delivery life-cycle methods
• Continuous integration builds;
• managing multiple configuration files in multiple deployment environments;
• managing multiple releases in multiple deployment environments;
• deploying variety of artifacts web/enterprise applications
• Manage complexities of partial deployments & work with tools to handle the same
• Form, motivate, and lead high-performance cross-functional teams
• Build effective partnerships with, and between, the developers, architects, QA Team, and product managers
• Networks with senior internal and external personnel in own area of expertise
• Demonstrates the ability to positively influence change and address barriers impeding progress.
• Provides leadership and encourages teamwork throughout all levels of the organization
• May interact with business leadership at all levels
• Coaches, mentors, and trains as appropriate
• Contributes to performance appraisals for team members
• Assists in conducting team building/development activities
• Be change agent for instituting release approach in developing and delivery of business functionality that involves a range of systems and business priorities
• Drives selection and adoption of enterprise-wide process and policy
• Self directing and provides direction for others within and outside the team

Working at GSPANN
GSPANN is a diverse, prosperous, and rewarding place to work. We provide competitive benefits, educational assistance, and career growth opportunities to our employees. Every employee is valued for their talent and contribution. Working with us will give you an opportunity to work globally with some of the best brands in the industry. The company does and will take an affirmative action to employ and advance in the employment of individuals with disabilities and protected veterans, and to treat qualified individuals without discrimination based on their physical or mental disability status. GSPANN is an equal opportunity employer for minorities/females/veterans/disability.