DevOps & Delivery Manager

Role Summary

The DevOps & Delivery Manager leads how software is built, released, and supported across Blue Bell. This hands-on leadership role manages the internal software engineering team, partners closely with enterprise architecture, and oversees third-party development services. The manager establishes delivery priorities, advances CI/CD and release-management practices, and leads technical delivery for major initiatives, including direct-store-delivery handheld and enterprise resource planning programs. The ideal candidate combines strong engineering credibility with practical leadership and can communicate effectively with technical teams, business leaders, vendors, and operations stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Work Intake, Classification, and Prioritization

• Own the end-to-end intake process for IT requests and ensure work is consistently classified as break/fix, enhancement, new requirement, or project.
• Document classification standards, automate routing where practical, and promote consistent use across teams.
• Route work to the appropriate internal, managed services, or project delivery stream.
• Lead a weekly prioritization cadence with IT and business stakeholders and maintain a clear, ranked backlog for each delivery stream.
• Monitor the allocation of team capacity between operational support and project delivery, escalating risks to committed deliverables.
• Define and uphold clear readiness and completion criteria for each work type.

Engineering Team Management and Delivery

• Lead the software engineering team and oversee contract integration resources.
• Manage hiring, performance, development planning, coaching, and corrective action; oversee contractor scope, hours, and renewal recommendations.
• Partner with technical architects and leads to prioritize work, maintain sound design standards, and resolve delivery or architecture concerns.
• Lead sprint planning, stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives while empowering technical leads to guide day-to-day engineering decisions.
• Establish clear expectations and measurable delivery standards for a distributed team, including cycle time, throughput, quality, and on-time delivery.
• Evaluate team capacity and capabilities and recommend staffing or sourcing adjustments based on business priorities.
• Allocate engineering resources across operational support, enhancements, and strategic programs.
• Manage third-party development partners, including work assignment, estimate review, service levels, milestones, deliverable acceptance, invoice validation, and cost reporting.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for external development partners and recommend scope, spending, and renewal decisions.
• Establish and maintain engineering standards for code review, branching, testing, documentation, and security.

CI/CD, Release Management, and Platform Engineering

• Design, implement, and manage CI/CD pipelines for internally developed applications and integrations, replacing manual deployments with automated, repeatable, and auditable releases.
• Maintain a coordinated release calendar and change-control process for internal applications, managed-services releases, enterprise systems, and major vendor go-lives.
• Own the environment strategy for development, testing, user acceptance, and production, including consistency, infrastructure as code where practical, secrets management, and rollback procedures.
• Implement monitoring, alerting, and logging practices that enable IT to identify and respond to production issues proactively.
• Partner with infrastructure, security, and data leaders on cloud platforms, networking, integrations, and data-pipeline delivery standards.

Project and Program Delivery

• Serve as the IT delivery lead for major enterprise initiatives, including direct-store-delivery handheld and ERP replacement programs.
• Lead workstream planning, integration and cutover preparation, environment readiness, testing coordination, go-live execution, and hyper care in partnership with business and vendor teams.
• Maintain the IT project portfolio, including scope, schedules, resources, risks, issues, and decisions.
• Prepare clear weekly status reports and executive summaries for IT and business leadership.
• Establish repeatable go/no-go, cutover, and hyper care practices for major releases.
• Manage project financials, including monthly spending, vendor cost variances, and value assessments.

Process and Continuous Improvement

• Document and standardize software development life cycle, intake, release, and support practices across the organization.
• Lead the transition to Jira as the primary platform for project and task management and eliminate duplicate tracking.
• Develop delivery and capacity dashboards using Jira and Microsoft reporting tools to provide clear, actionable insights.

Required Qualifications

• Five or more years of experience directly managing a software development team of at least five engineers, with responsibility for hiring, performance management, team development, sprint leadership, and delivery outcomes.
• Experience leading senior technical professionals, such as architects or technical leads, and managing remote or distributed teams.
• Five or more years of hands-on DevOps or release engineering experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines with GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or comparable tools.
• Experience implementing automated testing gates, artifact management, and deployment automation.
• Demonstrated success leading IT intake and prioritization processes that balance operational support and project delivery.
• Strong working knowledge of Jira, Jira Service Management, or comparable ITSM platforms, including workflow design, automation, reporting, and integration with development tools.
• Experience serving as the IT delivery or technical lead for at least one enterprise-system implementation or replacement, such as ERP, WMS, HCM/payroll, route accounting, or DSD, including cutover and hyper care.
• Experience with AWS or Azure environment provisioning, identity and access management, monitoring, and cost management.
• Solid understanding of application integration patterns, including REST APIs, EDI, file-based interfaces, and middleware.
• Experience managing third-party development or managed-services vendors against service levels, statements of work, and budgets.
• Ability to communicate effectively with nontechnical leaders, translate operational needs into prioritized work, and hold internal teams and vendors accountable.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in manufacturing, food and beverage, or consumer packaged goods, including direct-store-delivery operations, route accounting, or handheld and mobile field applications.
• Oracle E-Business Suite exposure or experience supporting an ERP replacement program.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power Apps, or Microsoft 365.
• Infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep, or comparable tools.
• Professional certifications such as PMP, PMI-ACP, Certified ScrumMaster, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, or ITIL 4.
• Hands-on development experience with C#/.NET, Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, SQL, or comparable technologies sufficient to review code and unblock engineers.

Core Competencies

• Delivery Ownership: Takes accountability for results and communicates risks early with thoughtful options.
• Sound Judgment: Makes well-reasoned decisions about operational priorities and project commitments.
• Technical Credibility: Understands pipelines, logs, pull requests, and engineering tradeoffs well enough to guide teams and remove obstacles.
• Vendor Leadership: Manages external partners fairly and firmly while protecting scope, budget, quality, and schedule.
• Operational Awareness: Understands the business impact of technology performance in production and route environments.
• Practical Process Improvement: Builds lightweight, repeatable practices that support accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.

What Success Looks Like

During the first year, the DevOps & Delivery Manager will be expected to:

• Establish a consistent intake, prioritization, and delivery process that clearly separates operational support from project work.
• Implement measurable engineering and vendor performance standards, supported by useful delivery and capacity reporting.
• Expand automated CI/CD and release-management practices across actively maintained applications.
• Strengthen monitoring and alerting so production issues are identified and addressed proactively.
• Develop clear resources, integration, testing, and cutover plans for major enterprise programs.
• Build a collaborative, accountable engineering culture focused on quality, predictability, continuous improvement, and business value.

Working Conditions

• This is a remote position with expected on-site presence at the Brenham, Texas headquarters for onboarding, quarterly planning, and key project milestones.
• Travel to plants and branch locations is required for major implementations, go-lives, and post-launch support.
• Periodic evening or weekend availability is required for releases, cutovers, and critical support windows.
• Estimated travel is 10–15%, with the possibility of increased travel during major go-lives.

*IND