Technical Engineer III / Release Manager

The Imagine Group, An Imagine Company; Town of Tonawanda (NY); On-site; USD 74,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

The Imagine Group is seeking a Technical Engineer III / Release Manager to coordinate enterprise software releases for a major financial client in Buffalo, NY. The role focuses on release readiness, change governance, and reliable deployments across applications, infrastructure, and security.

You will manage CI/CD pipelines (GitLab/Azure DevOps), coordinate resources, and communicate impact to stakeholders while ensuring auditability and compliance in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to coordinate complex releases across multiple teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience in DevOps environments and CI/CD workflows.
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced release environment.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain enterprise release calendars and coordinate production releases.
• Lead release readiness reviews including testing and approvals.
• Coordinate deployment windows and resources across teams.
• Ensure change-management governance and audit evidence.
• Lead deployment bridges and promote code to production.
• Maintain GitLab and Azure DevOps pipelines and configurations.
• Support transition from on-premises to Azure-based pipelines.
• Communicate plans and status to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Conduct post-release reviews and implement process improvements.
• Provide backup support for evening production deployments.

Job description

Job Title: Technical Engineer III / Release Manager

Pay Range: $65.00/hour

Work Type: Full-time

Work Model: Onsite

Work Schedule: Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm

Nature & Scope:

Positional Overview

The Imagine Group is recruiting for a Technical Engineer III on behalf of our client, a leading financial institution in Buffalo, New York, serving individuals, businesses, and communities across the eastern United States. Known for its strong regional presence, commitment to community engagement, and focus on long-term customer relationships, the organization offers a stable and collaborative work environment with opportunities for growth

In this role, you will coordinate enterprise software releases from planning through production validation, ensuring release readiness, change-management compliance, and reliable deployments. You will work across application development, infrastructure, database, security, and business teams while executing and maintaining CI/CD deployment pipelines.

Role & Responsibility:

Tasks That Will Lead to Your Success

• Own and maintain enterprise release calendars and coordinate frequent, sometimes overlapping, production releases across applications, infrastructure, databases, security, and vendors.
• Lead release readiness reviews to verify testing, SDLC deliverables, approvals, implementation procedures, rollback plans, support readiness, and complete audit evidence.
• Coordinate deployment windows, technical resources, dependencies, competing schedules, and risk mitigation across multiple engineering and business teams.
• Follow strict change-management governance, ensure appropriate change records and approvals, and elevate release risks or control gaps.
• Organize and lead deployment bridges, coordinate code promotion to production, arrange post-deployment validation, and confirm successful closure of releases and changes.
• Execute, administer, troubleshoot, and maintain GitLab and Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines; update pipeline configurations, deployment targets, and servers as needed.
• Use Git-based version control, branching and code-promotion strategies, and PowerShell or comparable scripting to support controlled, repeatable deployments.
• Support the transition from on-premises deployment pipelines to Azure-based pipelines and collaborate with engineering and SRE teams on deployment reliability.
• Communicate release plans, implementation status, changes, incidents, and business impacts clearly to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Conduct post-release reviews, analyze deployment incidents, document lessons learned, and improve release processes, automation, and operational stability.
• Work independently in a small release-management team supporting a large engineering organization; occasionally provide backup support for evening production deployments.
• Adhere to applicable risk, regulatory, security, audit, and internal control requirements; complete other related duties as assigned.

Skills & Experience

Qualifications That Will Help You Thrive

• Combined minimum of 6 years of higher education and/or relevant work experience in systems design, management, architecture, or related technical disciplines.
• Approximately 5–8+ years of enterprise release engineering, release management, DevOps, or platform engineering experience.
• Proven ownership of production release planning, coordination, readiness, execution, change governance, and post-deployment validation.
• Hands‑on experience with GitLab and/or Azure DevOps, Git branching and code promotion, and CI/CD pipeline execution, administration, maintenance, and troubleshooting.
• Strong cross‑functional communication, stakeholder coordination, prioritization, and ability to manage multiple concurrent releases.

Education & Experience Preferred

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, IT, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience supporting Azure cloud-based deployments and migration of on-premises CI/CD pipelines to Azure.
• PowerShell scripting and deployment automation; familiarity with infrastructure as code and cloud-native delivery patterns.
• Experience with release calendars, change tickets, rollback procedures, audit artifacts, production support, and release incident reviews.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated enterprise environment.
• Knowledge of cross‑system dependencies involving application, database, network, infrastructure, and security changes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation, influencing, troubleshooting, and analytical problem‑solving skills.
• Ability to work independently, collaborate across teams without direct reporting authority, and adapt in a high-volume release environment.
• Able to learn quickly in a rapid pace environment.