Release Lead

Quality Professionals | Software Testing & QA; United Arab Emirates; On-site; AED 300,000 - 520,000; Full time

Job summary

Quality Professionals (Q-Pros) is seeking a Release Lead to govern end-to-end release lifecycles for CDP applications in the UAE. You will establish standardized release processes and coordinate across multiple projects, driving CI/CD/DevOps adoption and ensuring safe, efficient releases with minimal business disruption.

The role requires hands-on experience with release governance, JIRA tracking, and cross-functional collaboration with Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, and Security teams

Qualifications

• Proven experience as Release Lead/Manager in large-scale environments.
• Strong understanding of release lifecycles for SaaS and enterprise apps.
• Hands-on with CI/CD, DevOps, automated deployments, and containerization.
• Experience with release governance and CAB processes.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the Release Policy, Master Release Plan, and End-to-End Release Gate process.
• Own and maintain the Master Release Calendar and coordinate schedules across projects.
• Collaborate with Change Management to ensure readiness checks and CAB approvals.
• Drive CI/CD and DevOps adoption, with automated deployments across environments.
• Establish automated release practices using DevOps, BDD, and containerized deployment.
• Coordinate with Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security and Change teams for repeatable releases.
• Define release readiness criteria, gates, checklists, rollback plans, and post-release validation.
• Manage release dependencies across applications, platforms, integrations, and SaaS solutions.
• Use JIRA to track activities, risks, issues, and readiness.
• Set up monitoring and release dashboards to support deployment validation and issue detection.
• Provide regular release status and KPI reports to CDP leadership.

Skills

Release Lead/Release Manager

CI/CD pipelines

DevOps practices

JIRA

Monitoring and release tooling

Stakeholder management

Automation

Problem solving

Tools

JIRA

CI/CD tooling

Monitoring tools

Job description

Quality Professionals (Q-Pros) is a leading software quality assurance and testing company, with a strong presence across the Middle East and GCC. We are looking for a Release Lead to join our one of our clients in UAE.

Role Overview

The Release Lead will be responsible for managing and governing the end-to-end release lifecycle for Common Digital Platform (CDP) applications. The role will establish standardized release processes, coordinate releases across multiple CDP projects, drive CI/CD/CT, and ensure applications are released safely, efficiently, and with minimal business disruption.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the Release Policy, Master Release Plan, and End-to-End Release Gate process for all CDP applications.
• Own and maintain the Master Release Calendar, coordinating release schedules across projects and ensuring there are no release conflicts.
• Work closely with the Change Management team to ensure all CDP applications complete the required release governance and readiness checks before CAB approval.
• Drive CI/CD and DevOps adoption, including automated application deployments across development, testing, staging, and production environments.
• Establish and improve automated release practices using DevOps, BDD, containerized deployment approaches, and relevant CI/CD tools.
• Work closely with Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, and Change teams to ensure seamless and repeatable release execution.
• Define release readiness criteria, entry/exit gates, deployment checklists, rollback plans, and post-release validation processes.
• Manage release dependencies across applications, platforms, integrations, and SaaS solutions.
• Use tools such as JIRA to track release activities, dependencies, risks, issues, and readiness.
• Set up and leverage application monitoring and release monitoring tools to support deployment validation and early detection of issues.
• Establish release dashboards and KPIs, including release success rate, deployment frequency, failed releases, rollback rate, release lead time, and release-related incidents.
• Provide regular release status, performance, and success reporting to CDP leadership and relevant stakeholders.
• Continuously identify opportunities to improve release automation, standardization, quality, and time-to-market.

Experience & Skills

• Proven experience as a Release Lead / Release Manager in large-scale enterprise technology environments.
• Strong understanding of application and SaaS development and release lifecycles.
• Hands-on understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, automated deployments, containerization, and BDD.
• Experience with JIRA and release/change management processes.
• Experience working with monitoring, deployment, and DevOps toolsets.
• Strong understanding of enterprise change governance, CAB processes, release controls, and production deployment practices.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to coordinate multiple technology teams and concurrent projects.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on automation, operational efficiency, and continuous improvement.
• Experience managing releases across multiple applications, environments, integrations, and technology teams.