Head of Software Release & Product Operations

Aurora; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 162,000 - 259,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity compensation

Benefits

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Aurora is seeking a leader in Product Operations to own the software release cycle end-to-end, from build readiness through rollout, supporting growth toward 20 AVs deployed per week. You will translate engineering roadmaps into an operational readiness plan, partner with multiple teams, and drive release metrics and governance.

Based in a major U.S. city, you will collaborate with Aurora Driver, Service Engineering, Launch Operations, and Product Ops to ensure timely, safe, and efficient

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in program/product operations, technical program management, or release management in a software-driven environment with hardware dependencies.
• Experience owning a software release cycle end-to-end, including build readiness, rollout, and defect management.
• Proven track record building or improving feature and bug tracking systems at scale.
• Strong cross-functional stakeholder management between Engineering and Operations.
• Ability to operate in a fast-scaling R&D-to-commercial transition with repeatable processes.
• Strong analytical and communication skills translating release data for technical and executive audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own enterprise-wide customer and operations release strategy.
• Define release readiness and risk governance.
• Drive cross-functional capability roadmap alignment with executive targets.
• Unify release governance across software, hardware, and platform changes.
• Establish release metrics and health reporting for leadership.
• Manage backlog hygiene and defect escalation across pipelines.
• Own the software release cycle from build readiness to rollout with Engineering.
• Coordinate on mixed releases spanning software and hardware components.
• Drive release metrics like predictability and lead times.

Skills

Release management

Program management

Cross-functional leadership

Analytics

Stakeholder mgmt

Communication

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Tableau

Looker

PowerBI

Job description

Aurora is seeking a leader in Product Operations to own the software release cycle end-to-end, from build readiness through rollout, supporting growth toward 20 AVs deployed per week. You will translate engineering roadmaps into an operational readiness plan, partner with multiple teams, and drive release metrics and governance.

Based in a major U.S. city, you will collaborate with Aurora Driver, Service Engineering, Launch Operations, and Product Ops to ensure timely, safe, and efficient