Release Manager

Job Title: Technical Release Manager (Contract to Hire) Department: Release Management & DevOps Location: Remote or Hybrid in Tampa area Summary of Duties & Responsibilities: BST Global is seeking an experienced Technical Release Manager to drive enterprise software release planning, coordination, governance, and deployment activities across multiple product lines and technology platforms. You will serve as the operational hub between Engineering, Product Management, Quality Assurance, DevOps, IT/ICS, and Security teams, ensuring software releases are delivered safely, predictably, and efficiently. This role requires strong expertise in release planning, orchestration, software delivery lifecycle management, Azure DevOps, CI/CD practices, change management, and enterprise-scale dependency coordination. The ideal candidate possesses a strong technical foundation in DevOps and software delivery while maintaining exceptional organizational, communication, and stakeholder management skills. Essential Functions: Enterprise Release Planning & Coordination Manage the enterprise release calendar across multiple product teams. Coordinate and govern releases spanning applications, services, infrastructure, databases, and cloud platforms. Lead release readiness reviews and Go/No-Go decision processes. Identify and manage cross-team dependencies, scheduling conflicts, and deployment risks. Ensure release activities align with business priorities and market commitments. Facilitate release planning meetings and release retrospectives Perform other related duties as directed Release Governance & Compliance Define and maintain release management standards, policies, procedures, and controls. Manage change approval processes and release governance workflows. Ensure releases comply with security, audit, compliance, and operational standards. Maintain traceability between requirements, defects, builds, deployments, and releases. Develop release scorecards and executive reporting. DevOps & Continuous Delivery Partnership Partner with DevOps Engineers to improve CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation. Promote modern release engineering practices including continuous delivery, progressive delivery, and automated rollback strategies. Champion reduction of manual deployment activities through automation. Deployment Execution Collaborate with ICs to coordinate production deployments of all releases. Assist with deployment command-center activities during large-scale releases. Monitor deployment progress and communicate risks early to stakeholders. Coordinate validation, smoke testing, and post-release verification activities. Identify release risks and develop mitigation plans. Facilitate deployment war rooms during critical incidents. Support incident response and postmortem analysis for release-related failures. Track corrective actions to completion. Release Management Enterprise software release management experience. Multi-team release coordination experience. Change management and governance experience. Release readiness and deployment planning. Dependency management and roadmap alignment. Agile release planning methodologies. DevOps & CI/CD Strong understanding of Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Git, Branching strategies, build and artifact management, CI/CD. Working knowledge of Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, YAML-based pipelines and configuration management. Experience supporting releases in enterprise cloud environments including Microsoft Azure, hybrid cloud architectures, platform services. Quality & Security Experience integrating release processes with test automation, quality gates, security scanning and DevSecOps controls. Leadership & Coordination Strong facilitation and meeting leadership skills. Ability to coordinate large cross-functional efforts. Exceptional stakeholder management. Strong conflict resolution and negotiation capabilities. Communication Ability to communicate technical and business risks effectively. Clear written and verbal communication. Problem Solving Analytical and data-driven decision making. Ability to prioritize competing demands. Calm and effective under pressure. Organizational Skills Exceptional planning and execution capabilities. Proven ability to manage multiple concurrent releases. Strong attention to detail. Education or Prior Work Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent practical experience. 5+ years' experience in Release Management, DevOps, Project Delivery, Technical Program Management. Relevant Azure certifications, CSM, ITIL Foundation are a strong plus. Reports to: Director, Release Management & DevOps Number Supervised: 0 Travel: Up to 0% Classification: Non-Exempt This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines. Physical Demands: While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. #J-18808-Ljbffr