Software Release Manager

Job Description

Job Description

6 Month Contract - Extension Possibility

Hybrid/Remote - Berkeley, CA

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The American Science Cloud (AmSC) is seeking a Software Release Manager to establish disciplined software release practices across a complex, multi-institutional scientific software project. Much of the early development has been performed by researchers and domain experts who are excellent technical contributors, but the codebase, release process, documentation, testing, and deployment workflows require additional structure, consistency, and operational rigor.

The Software Release Manager will help move AmSC capabilities from research code and prototype implementations into reliable, maintainable, tested, documented, and deployable software releases. This role requires strong technical judgment, excellent organizational skills, and the ability to coordinate across researchers, software developers, DevOps engineers, QA staff, product managers, architects, cybersecurity staff, infrastructure teams, and partner institutions.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Define, implement, and manage the AmSC software release process across multiple development teams and institutions.
• Develop and maintain release calendars, readiness criteria, versioning conventions, branching strategies, release checklists, and change log processes.
• Facilitate release readiness reviews, go/no-go decisions, deployment planning, and post-release retrospectives.
• Track release scope, risks, blockers, defects, dependencies, and acceptance criteria across multiple teams and repositories.
• Establish practical release governance for a codebase that has grown organically through research-driven development.
• Communicate release status, risks, readiness gaps, and delivery confidence to technical teams, product leadership, project management, and stakeholders.
• Support a distributed, multi-institutional team by clarifying ownership, handoffs, contribution workflows, and integration expectations.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, physical sciences, information systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in software release management, release engineering, DevOps coordination, or technical delivery in a complex software environment.
• Experience working with distributed software teams, multi-team delivery structures, or multi-institutional technical collaborations.
• Strong understanding of modern software development practices, including version control, branching strategies, CI/CD, automated testing, code review, issue tracking, release tagging, and deployment workflows.
• Experience with tools such as Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Confluence or equivalent systems.
• Ability to bring structure to ambiguous, rapidly evolving, or organically developed software projects.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, organizational skills, and attention to detail.
• Demonstrated ability to identify risks, dependencies, process gaps, and blockers, and drive them toward resolution.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with research software, scientific computing, HPC, cloud platforms (including AWS), data-intensive systems, distributed systems, or AI/ML infrastructure.
• Experience transitioning research prototypes or exploratory codebases into maintainable, testable, production-oriented software systems.
• Experience supporting release processes for API-driven platforms, federated systems, infrastructure services, or user-facing technical platforms.
• Experience working in national laboratories, universities, government-funded research programs, or complex scientific collaborations.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices, containerization, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, cloud services, HPC systems, or scientific workflow platforms.
• Agile, Scrum, DevOps, ITIL, or release management certifications (e.g. ITIL4)