Release Manager, SAP

Release Manager, SAP

Boeing is seeking an accomplished Release Manager, SAP for our Seattle, WA or Dallas, TX locations, to orchestrate end-to-end SAP releases across complex, multi-wave enterprise programs following the SAP Activate methodology. In this pivotal role you will serve as the central hub connecting functional workstreams, technical teams, Basis operations, and business stakeholders — ensuring every release wave lands on time, within scope, and at the quality bar the business demands.

You will define and govern the release calendar, manage change & release strategies, coordinate transport management, and drive continuous improvement across the release lifecycle. Your deep understanding of SAP architecture — spanning Basis, ABAP development, and key functional modules — equips you to identify risks early, broker technical trade-offs, and keep complex dependencies from derailing program milestones.

Key Responsibilities

Release Planning & Wave Orchestration

• Design and maintain comprehensive wave-based release roadmaps aligned with SAP Activate phases (Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, Run).
• Define release scope, sequencing, and cutover strategies for each wave, coordinating across value streams, work streams, business and technical streams.
• Establish and enforce release gates, entry/exit criteria, and quality checkpoints across all waves.
• Lead release planning ceremonies including kick-offs, milestone reviews, go/no-go calls, and post-release retrospectives.
• Manage wave-level interdependencies, critical path analysis, and schedule risk mitigation.

Environment & Transport Management

• Own the SAP system migration strategy — defining configuration and governance of transport landscape from Development, QA, Pre-Production, and Production environments.
• Govern the transport management process using SAP certified migration tools (Active Control, Rev-Trac, Cloud ALM etc), ensuring all transports are tracked, tested, and promoted through the landscape in a controlled manner.
• Coordinate activities including system refreshes, client copies, kernel upgrades, and patch cycles in alignment with release schedules.
• Manage environment availability windows and prevent environment conflicts across concurrent workstreams.

SAP Technical Oversight

• Apply working knowledge of SAP Basis (system administration, workload management, performance tuning, authorization concepts) to facilitate technical release decisions.
• Collaborate with ABAP development teams on transport packaging, code freeze enforcement, and regression risk assessment.
• Evaluate technical change impact analyses and translate findings into actionable release risk decisions.
• Oversee SAP system integrations, middleware touchpoints, and interface testing coordination within the release cycle.
• Support solution validation activities including SIT, UAT, performance testing, and cutover rehearsals.

Stakeholder & Governance

• Serve as the single point of accountability for release status across program leadership, business owners, and SI partners.
• Maintain the release register, change log, and decision log; produce executive dashboards and release status reports.
• Chair the Release Advisory Board (RAB) or Change Advisory Board (CAB) cadences.
• Identify, escalate, and resolve release blockers in a timely manner, broker trade-off decisions between scope, schedule, and quality.
• Partner with PMO, Solution Architects, and Business Process Owners to align release content with program objectives.

Cutover & Go-Live Management

• Develop and maintain detailed cutover plans and runbooks for each wave go-live event.
• Orchestrate dry-run/mock cutover rehearsals and document lessons learned for continuous improvement.
• Lead hypercare planning, war-room operations, and stabilization activities in the immediate post-go-live period.
• Coordinate decommissioning of legacy systems and data archival activities where applicable.

Process Improvement & Tooling

• Continuously refine release management processes, playbooks, and tooling to increase velocity and reduce risk.
• Champion DevOps and automation practices (CI/CD pipelines, automated testing integration, release automation tools such as SAP Cloud ALM, Solman, or third-party orchestration platforms).
• Establish metrics and KPIs for release health: deployment frequency, change failure rate, mean time to restore (MTTR), and cycle time.

Basic Qualifications (Must Have Skills/Experience)

• 1+ year of leadership experience (team leader, temp manager, large scale cross functional project/program management, or formal manager experience) OR completion of the Boeing internal course "Exploring Leadership."
• 10+ years of leading delivery of SAP solution development efforts including functional and technical solutions
• 5+ years in SAP release management and/or test automation?
• 3+ years of experience with SAP activate methodology.
• 3+ years of experience in Transport Management System (TMS)?
• 3+ years of experience as an ABAP developer.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with any of the following SAP skills; FI, SD, MM, PP, GTS, EH&S, CFIN, GPD, PS, EWM, Manhattan Associate AATP or SAP Basis.
• 3+ years of experience with creating engineering release plans and releasing engineering.
• Must have excellent written and verbal skills to communicate pertinent details regarding major incidents to executives, product, and technical teams.
• Must be willing to travel up to 25%

Preferred (Nice to have skills/experience)

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• SAP Activate Methodology Certification or equivalent Agile/SAFe certification
• Experience with S/4HANA greenfield or brownfield conversion programs
• Exposure to SAP BTP, SAP Integration Suite, or SAP Datasphere in a release context
• 3+ years orchestrating wave-based SAP releases on large-scale, global implementations (ECC, S/4HANA, or hybrid landscapes)
• Proficiency with change/transport tooling: SAP CTS+, SAP Solution Manager (ChaRM / Focused Build), SAP Cloud ALM, Active Control or Rev-Trac
• Familiarity with ITSM frameworks (ITIL v4) and formal CAB/RAB governance models
• Experience with cloud-native CI/CD tooling integrated with SAP delivery pipelines (Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI)
• PMP, PMI-ACP, or SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) certification.
• Prior experience in regulated industries (Life Sciences, Finance, or Public Sector) with validation and compliance requirements
• Relevant SAP certifications (SAP Activate, SAP Solution Manager, SAP Basis) strongly preferred
• Experience managing complex multi-vendor and SI partner ecosystems within a formal governance model