Release Manager

Penn State University; University Park (TX); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Penn State University is seeking a skilled Release Manager to orchestrate software releases across development, testing, and production environments. You will blend DevOps practices with project management to ensure reliable deployments that meet business needs and governance requirements.

Responsibilities cover planning, automation, environment management, and cross-team coordination. The role requires experience with SDLC, Agile, and cloud platforms, and will involve governance and incident

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required.
• 3+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience owning end-to-end software releases across environments.
• Salesforce release management experience and cloud platform familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute release planning strategy and roadmaps.
• Coordinate release schedules across teams and projects.
• Define criteria, processes, and approval workflows for releases.
• Maintain service level agreements for release activities and QA gates.
• Oversee DevOps services, CI/CD tooling, and environment traceability.

Skills

SDLC

Waterfall & Agile

End-to-end releases

CI/CD

Azure DevOps

AWS / Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Job description

POSITION SPECIFICS

Penn State University is excited to announce an opportunity for a talented and experienced individual to join us as a Release Manager on the Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Program Team! As an enterprise implementation, this program is designed to advance engagement and service delivery for the entire university community, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, ensuring integrated solutions that create value across all Penn State constituencies. The Release Manager is responsible for orchestrating and streamlining the software release process across development, testing, and production environments. This role combines technical expertise in DevOps practices with project management skills to ensure reliable, efficient, and traceable software deployments.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Release Planning & Strategy

• Develop and maintain comprehensive release management strategy and roadmap
• Coordinate release schedules across multiple teams and projects
• Define release criteria, processes, and approval workflows
• Establish and monitor service level agreements for release activities

DevOps & Automation

• Deploy and maintain enterprise DevOps services to streamline release management
• Enhance automation capabilities across the CI/CD pipeline
• Implement and maintain deployment automation tools and processes
• Ensure full environment traceability throughout the release lifecycle
• Serve as point of contact for the purchased devops and backup tool
• Maintain disaster recovery plans and support business continuity efforts, including monitoring and testing of backups

Environment Management

• Oversee development, testing, staging, and production environments
• Maintain environment configuration consistency and documentation
• Coordinate environment provisioning and capacity planning
• Monitor environment health and performance metrics

Process & Quality Assurance

• Establish and enforce code versioning best practices
• Implement deployment methodologies and standards
• Conduct release readiness assessments and go/no-go decisions
• Manage rollback procedures and incident response protocols

Stakeholder Coordination

• Facilitate release planning meetings and communication
• Coordinate with development, QA, operations, and business teams
• Provide release status updates to leadership and stakeholders
• Manage change control processes and documentation

QUALIFICATIONS

Qualified candidates will demonstrate strength across several of the following areas:

Experience

• Strong background in software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes
• Experience with both waterfall and agile development methodologies
• Demonstrated experience owning end-to-end software releases through production, including coordinating complex releases across multiple technical teams, applications or workstreams, and environments
• Experience coordinating releases across development, testing/UAT, staging, and production environments
• Salesforce-specific release management experience
• Experience with cloud platforms, including AWS and/or Azure
• Proficiency with Azure DevOps or a comparable CI/CD and release management platform

Process & Project Management

• Strong understanding of ITIL practices and change management
• Experience with project management methodologies and tools
• Experience with production change control, including release approvals, go/no-go decisions, rollback planning, and incident response
• Knowledge of risk assessment and mitigation strategies
• Understanding of compliance and regulatory requirements
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate release activities and communicate status, risks, and dependencies across technical and business stakeholders

MINIMUM EDUCATION, WORK EXPERIENCE & REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS

If filled as DevOps Engineer - Advanced Professional, this position requires:

• Bachelor's Degree
• 3+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience accepted
• Required Certifications: None

If filled as DevOps Engineer - Senior Professional, this position requires:

• Bachelor's Degree
• 6+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience accepted
• Required Certifications: None