Senior Manager, Software Product & Release Operations

Aurora; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 179,000 - 287,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity compensation

Benefits

Job summary

Aurora is seeking a Senior Product Operations professional to own the enterprise-wide release strategy across software, autonomous systems, and fleet operations. You will drive readiness governance, partner with engineering, product, and commercial teams, and unify release processes across software and hardware changes to enable safe, scalable deployments.

The role requires 7+ years in program/production operations, strong data analytics, and experience with release tooling.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in program/product operations or release management.
• Experience owning a software release cycle end-to-end.
• Proven track record building or improving release tracking systems and processes at scale.
• Strong cross-functional stakeholder management between Engineering and Operations.
• Able to translate technical release data into clear, actionable recommendations for both technical and executive audiences.
• Experience in fast-scaling, R&D-to-commercial transition environments.

Responsibilities

• Own Enterprise-Wide Customer and Operations Release Strategy and evolve the framework for software, autonomous systems, and fleet operations.
• Define release readiness and risk governance standards for company-wide evaluation and deploy readiness.
• Partner with VP/Director-level leaders to align multi-year capability roadmaps with GTM expansion targets.
• Unify governance across interdependent software, hardware, and platform changes and resolve release trade-offs.
• Define and report on release metrics including predictability, defect escape, and lead times.
• Standardize backlog hygiene and defect escalation pathways across software and operations pipelines.
• Own the software release cycle end-to-end from build readiness to rollout in collaboration with Engineering.
• Coordinate cross-functional teams on releases spanning software and hardware components.
• Drive overall release metrics and governance across enterprise teams.

Skills

Release management

Program management

Cross-functional collaboration

Data analysis

Communication

BI tools

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Tableau

Looker

Power BI

Job description

Who We Are

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone. At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on LinkedIn. Aurora’s Product Operations team is at the fore-front of technology, providing partnership to product, operations & engineering and ensuring commercial operations capabilities are delivered on time, safely and efficiently. Within Product Operations, our Software Product & Release Operations function owns the release cadence and readiness of everything Aurora ships in software - closing the gap between engineering roadmaps and operational readiness, not just reporting on it.

In This Role You Will

• Own Enterprise-Wide Customer and Operations Release Strategy: Own and evolve the overarching operations release strategy across software, autonomous systems, and fleet operations, ensuring our release and rollout framework scales seamlessly with business and fleet growth.
• Define Release Operational readiness & risk Governance: Define and institute company-wide release readiness and risk gating standards, serving as the accountable authority for the evaluation framework leadership relies on to clear commercial deployments.
• Drive Cross-Functional Capability Roadmap Alignment: Partner directly with VP and Director-level leaders across Engineering, Product, and Commercial Operations to align multi-year capability roadmaps with commercial and business GTM expansion targets.
• Unify Multi-System Releases: Unify release governance across complex, interdependent software, hardware, and platform changes—resolving top-level trade-offs and cross-departmental dependencies when release timelines conflict with operational readiness
• Establish Customer & Operations Release & Health Metrics: Define, own, and report on enterprise release predictability, defect escape metrics, and roadmap-to-readiness lead times for executive leadership.
• Manage Feature & Defect Escalation Frameworks: Standardize backlog hygiene and defect escalation pathways across the software and operational release pipelines, ensuring systemic feedback loops exist between field performance and engineering.
• Own the Software Release and change Management Cycle: Own and evolve the overall release strategy across autonomous operations. Spanning across the entire software release cycle, from build readiness through rollout, in partnership with Software Engineering.
• Manage Feature and Bug Tracking: Own backlog hygiene and defect escalation paths across the software release pipeline, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks between Engineering and Operations.
• Coordinate on Mixed Releases: Partner with Product Ops & Platform Enablement on releases that span both software and hardware/platform changes, deferring Go/No-Go authority to them for the hardware/platform components.
• Drive Release Metrics: Own and report on release predictability, defect escape rate, and roadmap-to-readiness lead time.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in program/product operations, technical program management, or release management, ideally in a software-driven environment with adjacent hardware dependencies (automotive, robotics, or similar)
• Demonstrated experience owning a software release cycle end-to-end, including build readiness, rollout, and defect management
• Proven track record of building or improving feature and bug tracking systems and processes at scale
• Strong cross-functional stakeholder management — this role sits between Engineering and Operations and needs credibility with both
• Comfort operating in a fast-scaling, R&D-to-commercial transition environment — someone who builds repeatable process without over-engineering it around a moving technical target
• Strong analytical and communication skills, able to translate technical release data into clear, actionable recommendations for both technical and executive audiences

Desired Qualifications

• Experience in autonomous vehicles, automotive, or another safety-critical software domain
• Familiarity with how software releases interact with hardware/platform dependencies, even without owning that release cycle directly
• Background in technical program management or software release engineering
• Experience working with BI tools (Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, etc.) for release metrics tracking
• Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, or equivalent tools for release and backlog tracking

For roles based in San Francisco, CA: The salary range for this position is $179,000 - $287,000 per year.

For roles based in Pittsburgh, PA and Dallas, TX: The salary range for this position is $162,000 - $259,000 per year.

Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

Working at Aurora

At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks. We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy, and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, Aurorans are expected to work from the office at least 3 days per week, with some roles requiring more frequent in-office presence, up to 5 days per week, based on operational needs. Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.

Our commitment to safety

At the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.

Our commitment to inclusion

Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [e-mail]. For California applicants, information collected and processed as part of your application and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Aurora’s California Employment Privacy Policy.