Release Manager

Description

Job ID 9549

Job Location: Iași

Hybrid role - Iași candidates only

Life at Ness 

At Ness, people come first. Here, you'll be part of a vibrant team that values curiosity, innovation, and growth. We work with industry-leading clients on projects that truly make an impact while supporting every team member in carving out their unique career path. With resources for learning, certifications, and hands-on experiences, Ness offers you more than just a job it’s a place where your ideas, ambition, and well-being matter.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Release Manager to shape and drive the release strategy of a technology-led organisation that invests continuously in R&D, engineering talent and delivery velocity.

You will own the end-to-end release lifecycle across multiple products and platforms, working alongside international Agile squads to ensure that new features are deployed incrementally, safely and predictably as part of a global platform.

This is a high-visibility position combining technical fluency, process discipline and stakeholder leadership. You will partner with Engineering, QA, DevOps, TechOps, Security, Product and client-side teams, and you will play a decisive role in shortening the lead time from QA to Live, protecting live services and the customer experience, providing second-level support for escalated cases, and maturing release practices towards greater automation and transparency.

Key Responsibilities

Release Planning and Governance

• Own and maintain the enterprise release calendar, aligning release timelines, environment availability, and business-critical periods across squads and time zones.
• Plan and schedule all releases together with specialism leads and component owners, keeping every stakeholder informed.
• Define and maintain a component map that captures dependencies and release cycles and cadence.
• Define, document and continuously improve release strategies, policies, runbooks and templates, in line with industry-standard continuous delivery practices.
• Chair release readiness reviews and go/no-go meetings, and take part in Change Advisory Board (CAB) sessions, securing formal approvals at each key milestone.

Coordination and Delivery

• Coordinate parallel releases across geographically distributed Agile squads, managing dependencies, conflicts and competing priorities.
  
• Oversee deployments across Development, Test, UAT, Staging and Production, including cutover planning and post-release validation.
  
• Plan release schedules that minimise the impact on a global customer base, and own the release notification process, introducing improvements that enable faster releases.
  
• Act as the single point of accountability for release status, escalations and communication with stakeholders, clients and vendors, and lead hypercare after go-live.

Risk, Quality and Compliance

• Identify and analyse release risks, mitigating them through phased releases planned with the squads and test and release leadership, and define rollback and contingency plans.
  
• Ensure complete release documentation, audit trails and evidence of testing and approvals, in line with ITIL practices and applicable regulatory requirements.
  
• Collaborate with QA to define release-level test strategies and verify quality gates before deployment.

2nd Level Support

• Perform in-depth analysis of support cases, including retesting in QA and interpretation of logs.
  
• Coordinate across multiple development teams to drive the timely resolution of escalated issues.
  
• Act as the coordination point between development teams and 1st-level support, ensuring clear handover and communication.

Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
  
• 5+ years of experience in release management, release or build engineering, DevOps coordination, or technical project management, including large-scale, multi-team releases.
  
• Proven experience coordinating releases across international Agile squads working in different time zones.
  
• Solid understanding of the software development lifecycle, Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), continuous delivery and DevOps principles.
  
• Hands-on knowledge of CI/CD tooling (for example Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI or GitHub Actions) and of Git-based source control workflows.
  
• Experience with ITIL-based change, release and incident management, including second-level support and log analysis, and with ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow.
  
• Proficiency with Jira and Confluence for planning, tracking and documentation.
  
• Experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure or GCP) and an understanding of containerised deployments.
  
• Excellent stakeholder management, negotiation and communication skills, at both technical and senior business levels.
  
• Fluent written and spoken English.

Other Key Competencies

• Strategic, structured thinking with strong attention to detail.
  
• Ownership mindset and composure under pressure.
  
• Strong analytical and risk-assessment capabilities.
  
• Customer-centric approach, with a focus on minimising customer impact.
  
• Collaborative leadership and the ability to influence without direct authority.
  
• Commitment to continuous improvement, automation and self-development

Why Join Us

At Ness, you will work with diverse, talented professionals who are dedicated to making an impact through technology. We encourage applicants of all backgrounds to apply—even if you don’t meet every requirement, we’d love to connect with you if this role excites you. We’re committed to creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates each team member’s unique talents.

With flexible remote options, diverse projects, and access to development resources, joining Ness means building a career that’s meaningful and impactful.

What to Expect Next

We believe great experiences start with transparency—and that includes our hiring process. Here’s what you can typically expect after you hit "Apply":

1.      HR Interview – A conversation to get to know you better and align on expectations.
2.      Technical Interview – A chance to showcase your skills and experience.
3.      Client Interview – Ensuring mutual fit between you and the client team.
4.      Offer Stage – If everything aligns, we’ll be happy to make it official.

While many of our roles involve just 2–3 steps, some client processes may include additional conversations. Regardless of the path, we aim to keep every step transparent and respectful of your time.

Ready to Start Your Journey?

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.