Manager, Release Management

Dayforce; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Dayforce is seeking a Manager, Release Management to lead a team responsible for monolithic and microservices releases. You will drive governance, planning, and cross-functional coordination across Product, Cloud, and Operations to improve reliability, predictability, and governance.

The role emphasizes automation and AI-enabled practices to reduce manual work. You will champion ownership, continuous improvement, and effective metrics while ensuring transparent communication with stakeholders

Qualifications

• Experience leading and developing a high-performing release management team.
• Proven ability to establish operating practices and performance measures.
• Experience coordinating release planning across products and services.
• Strong governance for Go/No-Go decisions with cross-functional input.
• Experience applying DevOps and AI-enabled approaches to improve release quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing release management team responsible for monolithic and microservices releases.
• Establish clear operating practices, performance expectations, and measures of success.
• Oversee release planning and coordination across products and services with stakeholder alignment.
• Lead release-readiness and Go/No-Go governance with cross-functional input.
• Define and improve release-readiness criteria and release-exit criteria.
• Maintain release reporting, dashboards, and audit documentation for transparency.

Skills

Leadership

Release management

Cross-functional collaboration

Change governance

Automation

Job description

About the Opportunity

The Manager, Release Management leads the people, practices, and cross-functional coordination required to deliver reliable, predictable, and well-governed software releases to our customers.

This role leads a team of Release Managers and partners closely with Product Management, Application Development, Cloud Infrastructure and Operations, Support, Cybersecurity, and other stakeholders throughout the software development lifecycle. The Manager is accountable for ensuring that release contents are complete and accurate, risks and dependencies are understood, release-readiness expectations are consistently applied, and stakeholders have the information needed to make sound release decisions.

This leader will build an environment where Release Managers take ownership, collaborate effectively, continuously improve how work gets done, and use modern automation and AI-enabled practices to improve release quality, efficiency, and predictability. The successful candidate must understand modern software delivery practices to lead release decisions, ask the right questions, assess delivery risk, and influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Location

Anywhere in the United States

The candidate must be a US citizen, naturalized citizen, green card holder or permanent resident. Must be eligible for background clearance.

What You’ll Get to Do

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing release management team responsible for monolithic and microservices releases, fostering ownership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Establish clear operating practices, performance expectations, and measures of success for the release management function.
• Oversee release planning and coordination across products and services, including release schedules, deployment windows, milestones, dependencies, and stakeholder alignment.
• Lead release-readiness and Go/No-Go governance, ensuring decisions are based on clear criteria, reliable information, and appropriate cross-functional input.
• Define, communicate, and continuously improve release-readiness and release-exit criteria across Product and Technology.
• Ensure release risks, exceptions, decisions, and key information are identified early, actively managed, accurately documented, and clearly communicated.
• Maintain consistent release reporting, dashboards, audit evidence, procedures, and decision records to support operational transparency and compliance.
• Drive improvements in release quality and predictability through root-cause analysis, automation, standardization, self-service capabilities, and modern release management, DevOps, and AI-enabled practices.
• Identify practical opportunities to use AI to improve release planning, risk identification, readiness assessment, reporting, communications, and post-release learning.
• Use AI and automation to reduce repetitive administrative work, enabling Release Managers to focus on judgment, coordination, and risk management.
• Measure the value of AI-enabled practices through outcomes such as reduced manual effort, earlier risk detection, improved predictability, and stronger stakeholder confidence.

Skills and Experience We Value

• Experience leading and developing a high-performing release management team responsible for monolithic and microservices releases, fostering accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Experience establishing clear operating practices, performance expectations, and success measures for a release management function.
• Experience overseeing release planning and coordination across products and services, including schedules, deployment windows, milestones, dependencies, and stakeholder alignment.
• Experience leading release-readiness and Go/No-Go governance, ensuring decisions are based on clear criteria, reliable information, and cross-functional input.
• Experience managing release risks, exceptions, decisions, reporting, documentation, and audit evidence while ensuring information is communicated effectively.
• Experience improving release quality and predictability through root-cause analysis, standardized practices, automation, self-service capabilities, and modern DevOps and AI-enabled approaches.

What Would Make You Stand Out

• Experience working in Agile, Lean, DevOps, or product operating models.
• Familiarity with ITIL, change enablement, or other IT service management frameworks.
• Experience managing releases across a combination of cloud-native services, microservices, platform components, and large enterprise applications.
• Experience improving or automating release controls, readiness checks, reporting, or deployment workflows.
• Experience supporting regulated, audited, or compliance-sensitive software delivery environments.
• Experience introducing AI-assisted tools or workflows within an operational, delivery, or program management function.

What’s in it for you

Dayforce is fueled by the diversity of our talented employees. We are an equal opportunity employer and consider and embrace ALL individuals and what makes them unique. We believe our employees should be happy and healthy, with peace of mind and a sense of fulfillment.

We encourage individuals to apply based on their passions.

Dayforce encourages personal and professional growth. We offer excellent time away from work programs, comprehensive wellness initiatives and recognition through competitive pay and benefits.

With a commitment to community impact, including volunteer days and our charity, Dayforce Cares we provide opportunities for you to thrive both in your career and personal life. Our focus is not just on your job but on supporting you to be the best version of yourself.

This job posting is for an existing vacancy

Artificial intelligence may be used in the screening, assessment, or selection of applicants for this position.

About the Salary Ranges

Please note that the salary range mentioned in this job description should serve simply as a guide. The final compensation offered may vary based on a variety of factors, including bonuses and/or incentives, or a candidate’s experience, skills, budget and location. Our company is committed to providing a fair, equitable, and competitive package that reflects the value an individual brings to the organization.

Proficiency in English is required for this position as this role will regularly interact with English-speaking stakeholders, co-workers, managers and/or clients across the world. Further, our back office support teams, including but not limited to Human Resources, are primarily English speaking. Employees need to be able to communicate with these departments in English to appropriately administer their business relationship. Due to the significant high volume of interactions with these English-speaking co-workers, managers, stakeholders and/or clients, which is inherent to this position, it is not possible to reorganize the company’s activities to avoid this requirement.