Senior Release Manager

NinjaOne; Town of Texas (WI); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) plan

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

NinjaOne is seeking a Senior Release Manager to own and rebuild release management for our rapidly growing SaaS platform. You will define release-readiness criteria, enforce standards across engineering teams, and partner with engineering leadership to build a technical roadmap for automated deployments.

You will hold final authority on production releases and bring hands-on expertise to live deployments. Experience with canary, blue-green, or rolling deployments, CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitHub

Qualifications

• 8+ years in Release Management for SaaS or cloud-native platforms.
• Built release processes and automation from the ground up with measurable impact.
• Experience with canary, blue-green, or rolling deployments.
• Held final go/no-go authority on production releases independently.
• Enforced release-readiness standards across teams.
• Managed releases at scale across distributed architectures.
• Proficiency with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Artifactory.
• Strong documentation discipline and stakeholder management.
• Working knowledge of AWS or similar cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Hold final go/no-go authority on production releases.
• Execute deployments with hands-on ownership of tooling.
• Define, document, and enforce release-readiness criteria.
• Build and maintain release automation and CI/CD pipelines.
• Write and execute rollback plans; own incident response.
• Define escalation paths for live release issues.
• Establish and track release health metrics.
• Document end-to-end release processes from scratch.
• Lay groundwork for staged, region-gated global releases.
• Coordinate high-frequency releases across distributed teams.
• Drive tooling adoption across teams.

Skills

Release management

Release automation

CI/CD pipelines

Canary deployment

Blue-green deployment

Rolling deployments

AWS

Documentation

Stakeholder management

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

ArgoCD

Artifactory

Job description

Description

About the Role

NinjaOne is hiring a Senior Release Manager to own and rebuild release management for our rapidly growing SaaS platform. This person will help define, standardize, and drive the release process towards automation. We're looking for a senior release-management practitioner with real, personal ownership of the release function: someone who has built release processes and automation from the ground up, who holds final go/no-go authority on production releases and has exercised that authority independently, and who defines what "release-ready" means and has enforced that standard against resistant teams without escalating to a manager first. You'll partner with engineering leadership to build a technical roadmap, push teams to adopt disciplined tooling and practices, and lay the groundwork for global release readiness — bringing structure, consistency, and hands‑on execution to how we plan, coordinate, and deliver releases across teams.

Location

We are flexible on remote working from home, if you are located in the USA and reside in one of the following states - CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, *IL, KS, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NC, NY, OH, OR, TN, TX, VA, and WA. We have physical offices in Austin, TX and Tampa, FL, if you prefer a hybrid option.

• Onsite interviews may be required for this role.

We hire the best software engineers, but experience in our stack can’t hurt: NinjaOne is built on Java, Kotlin, C++, Golang and Postgres; supporting millions of user endpoints and running as a scalable cloud service in AWS. Knowing large-scale datastore bottlenecks, asynchronous application design and client-server architecture will help you.

What You’ll be Doing

• Hold final go/no-go authority on production releases — not just facilitate the decision, make it.


• Personally execute deployments, with hands‑on ownership of the deployment tooling during live releases, not solely fielding escalations from the sidelines.


• Define, document, and enforce release‑readiness criteria across engineering teams — including pushing back on and holding the line with non‑compliant teams, independently.


• Build and maintain release automation and CI/CD release pipelines end‑to‑end.


• Write and personally execute rollback plans; own incident response when a release goes sideways mid‑deployment.


• Define escalation paths for live release issues and drive rapid resolution.


• Establish and track release health metrics — deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR — not just defect or rollback counts.


• Document the end‑to‑end release process from scratch, and continuously refine it to reduce risk.


• Lay the technical groundwork for staged, region‑gated global releases (Japan, EU, ANZ) — genuine sequencing, not scheduling‑window adjustments.


• Coordinate high‑frequency, complex releases across distributed engineering teams and stakeholders.


• Drive tooling adoption (Artifactory, CI pipelines, PR checklists, etc.) across teams that haven't yet standardized.


• Other duties as needed.

About You

• 8+ years in Release Management for SaaS or cloud‑native platforms.


• Demonstrated experience personally building release processes, release automation, or CI/CD release pipelines from the ground up — able to speak to what existed before, what you built, and the measurable impact.


• Direct, hands‑on experience with canary, blue‑green, or rolling deployments as part of release execution.


• A track record of holding final go/no-go authority on production releases, including at least one example of making that call independently.


• Experience enforcing release‑readiness standards against resistant or non‑compliant teams, without escalating to a manager first.


• Proven experience managing releases at scale across distributed engineering teams and microservices architectures.


• Experience with staged or sequenced multi‑region release rollouts.


• Deep, current (last 2–3 years) fluency with release tooling — Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Artifactory, or similar — that you've configured and maintained yourself as part of the release process.


• Strong documentation discipline — able to point to a release process you've documented from scratch.


• Working knowledge of AWS or similar cloud platforms.


• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills, in service of driving alignment and enforcing standards, not just reporting status.


• Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline or equivalent professional experience.

About Us

NinjaOne unifies IT to simplify work for nearly 40,000 customers in 140+ countries.

The NinjaOne Unified IT Operations Platform delivers endpoint management, autonomous patching, backup, and remote access in a single console to improve efficiency, increase resilience, and reduce spend. By automating IT and managing all endpoints, organizations give employees a great technology experience at work. NinjaOne is obsessed with customer success and has retained a 98% customer satisfaction score for more than 5 years.

What You’ll Love

We are a collaborative, kind, and curious community.

We honor your flexibility needs with full‑time work that is hybrid remote.

We have you covered with our comprehensive benefits package, which includes medical, dental, and vision insurance.

We help you prepare for your financial future with our 401(k) plan.

We prioritize your work‑life balance with our unlimited PTO.

We reward your work with opportunity for growth and advancement.

Additional Information

This position is NOT eligible for Visa sponsorship.

• Due to operational policies, NinjaOne is unable to hire for this role within the city limits of Chicago. We will consider all qualified candidates who reside outside of the city proper or are willing to self‑relocate.

Starting pay for the successful applicant depends on a variety of job‑related factors, including but not limited to location, market demands, experience, job‑related knowledge, and skills. The benefits available for this position include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, life insurance coverage and PTO. For roles based in California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, or Washington the base salary hiring range for this position is $120,000 - $200,000 per year.

For roles based in New York, the base salary hiring range for this position is $120,000 - $200,000 per year.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We are committed to providing an inclusive and diverse work environment.

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