Lead Software Release Manager

Mastercard; Helena (MT); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard seeks a Lead Software Release Manager to orchestrate end-to-end release planning and execution across 7-8 products and platforms. You will own the integrated release calendar, balance roadmaps with testing environments, regulatory needs, and cross-program dependencies, coordinating globally distributed teams.

The ideal candidate thrives in complex enterprise settings and will serve as the central point for release readiness, dependency management, and deployment execution, delivering

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in software delivery, technical program management, release management, or engineering operations.
• 5+ years managing enterprise-scale software releases.
• Experience coordinating releases across multiple products and engineering teams simultaneously.
• Strong understanding of SDL Co Agile and Scrum methodologies
• DevOps practices
• CI/CD pipelines
• Change and release management processes
• Demonstrated experience managing complex dependency chains and cross-functional delivery programs.
• Strong project planning, organization, and risk-management skills.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder-management capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise release calendar across 7-8 products and platforms.
• Coordinate release trains and major program increments across multiple teams.
• Identify, document, track, and proactively manage dependencies across products, programs, infrastructure, vendors, and customers.
• Facilitate dependency review forums and drive cross-functional alignment.
• Resolve schedule conflicts and escalation issues impacting release delivery.
• Govern utilization of testing and deployment environments across teams.
• Establish release entry and exit criteria and conduct readiness reviews.
• Track release blockers and drive resolution to ensure on-time deployment.

Skills

Release management

Enterprise software

Program management

Stakeholder management

CI/CD

DevOps

Scheduling

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/IT/Engineering

Tools

Jira

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

XL Release / Digital.ai Release

Splunk

Confluence

Job description

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build asustainableeconomy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactionssecure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Lead Software Release ManagerOverviewWe are seeking an experienced Software Release Manager to lead end-to-end release planning, scheduling, and orchestration across a portfolio of 7-8 interconnected software products and platforms. This role is responsible for establishing and maintaining an integrated release calendar that balances product roadmaps, engineering capacity, testing environment availability, customer commitments, regulatory requirements, and cross-program dependencies.The ideal candidate thrives in complex enterprise environments where multiple teams, systems, and stakeholders must coordinate to successfully deliver high-quality software releases. This individual will serve as the central point of coordination for release readiness, dependency management, environment planning, and deployment execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Release Planning & Scheduling
  • Own the enterprise release calendar across 7-8 products and platforms.
  • Develop and maintain integrated release schedules accounting for:
    • Development milestones
    • Integration testing windows
    • Pre-production validation
    • Performance and scalability testing
    • Production deployment windows
    • Customer onboarding and certification timelines
  • Coordinate release trains and major program increments across multiple teams.
  • Balance competing priorities while optimizing release frequency and stability.
• Dependency Management
  • Identify, document, track, and proactively manage:
    • Product-to-product dependencies
    • Program-to-program dependencies
    • Infrastructure dependencies
    • Vendor and external partner dependencies
    • Customer readiness dependencies
  • Facilitate dependency review forums and drive cross-functional alignment.
  • Resolve schedule conflicts and escalation issues impacting release delivery.
• Environment & Capacity Management
  • Govern utilization of critical testing and deployment environments, including:
    • Integration environment
    • System testing environment
    • UAT environment
    • Performance testing environment
    • Pre-production environment
    • Production environments
  • Coordinate environment reservations and conflict resolution across multiple teams.
  • Ensure environment readiness, availability, and release sequencing.
• Release Readiness & Governance
  • Establish release entry and exit criteria.
  • Conduct release readiness reviews and go/no-go assessments.
  • Verify completion of:
    • Functional testing
    • Integration testing
    • Regression testing
    • Performance testing
    • Security validation
    • Operational readiness activities
  • Ensure change management and release governance processes are followed.
• Stakeholder Coordination
  • Partner closely with:
    • Engineering team
    • Product Managers
    • Program Managers
    • Quality Engineering team
    • Site Reliability Engineering team
    • Infrastructure team
    • Customer delivery team
    • Operations and Support organizations
  • Communicate release plans, risks, constraints, and status to both technical and executive audiences.
  • Drive alignment across globally distributed teams.
• Risk & Issue Management
  • Identify schedule, environment, resource, and operational risks early.
  • Develop mitigation and contingency plans.
  • Lead release war rooms for major deployments.
  • Track and drive resolution of release blockers and critical dependencies.
• Metrics & Continuous Improvement
  • Define and monitor release management KPIs, including:
    • Release predictability
    • On-time delivery
    • Deployment success rate
    • Environment utilization
    • Defect leakage
    • Change failure rate
  • Continuously improve release planning processes, tooling, and governance.

All About You

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in software delivery, technical program management, release management, or engineering operations.
• 5+ years managing enterprise-scale software releases.
• Experience coordinating releases across multiple products and engineering teams simultaneously.
• Strong understanding of:
  • SDL Co Agile and Scrum methodologies
  • DevOps practices
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Change and release management processes
• Demonstrated experience managing complex dependency chains and cross-functional delivery programs.
• Strong project planning, organization, and risk-management skills.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder-management capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in large-scale distributed systems or payment-processing platforms.
• Experience coordinating releases across globally distributed teams.
• Working knowledge of tools such as:
  • Jirao Azure DevOps
  • GitHub Actions
  • Jenkin
  • XL Release / Digital.ai Release
  • Splunk Confluence
• PMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe, ITIL, or DevOps certifications.
• Experience supporting highly regulated or mission-critical production environments.

Success Measures

• Maintain a synchronized release schedule across 7-8 products with minimal conflicts.
• Improve release predictability and on-time delivery.
• Reduce environment contention and resource bottlenecks.
• Ensure all customer, platform, program, and infrastructure dependencies are proactively managed.
• Deliver production releases with high deployment success rates and low operational impact.
• Provide leadership visibility into release health, risks, and readiness.

Corporate Security Responsibility

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.