We are looking for an experienced Release Manager to own and orchestrate the end-to-end software release lifecycle across multi-cloud environments (GCP, Opensource) and a distributed microservices architecture. Operating at the intersection of engineering, operations, and business delivery, the role ensures that BSS platform releases — spanning billing, charging, customer management, and digital channels — are deployed to production safely, predictably, and with full stakeholder alignment.

You will coordinate releases across engineering, QA, DevOps, and product teams — ensuring quality, stability, and speed of delivery while managing a structured release calendar from scope freeze through post-deployment closure.

Key Responsibilities

1. Release Planning & Coordination

- Define and maintain release schedules, release trains, and sprint-to-production pipelines
- Coordinate with product managers, tech leads, and QA to align release scope, timelines, and dependencies
- Manage release calendars across multiple microservices with independent deployment cadences
- Run release readiness reviews, align stakeholders, and manage maintenance windows for successful production deployments
- Chair the release kick-off with the Change Management team to freeze release scope (CRs, Trouble Tickets, Problem Tickets, Technical Enhancements etc.)
- Conduct CR explanation sessions with Functional Leads.

2. CI/CD & GitHub Management

- Own and maintain branching strategies (GitFlow, trunk-based development) in GitHub
- Manage GitHub Actions workflows, pull request policies, and branch protection rules
- Coordinate merges, feature flags, and hotfix processes across 100+ microservice repositories
- Enforce tagging, versioning (SemVer), and changelog standards across repos
- Collaborate with DevOps/Platform teams on Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), Helm charts, and Terraform-based infrastructure changes




- Validate branch commits for each Microservice against release scope

3. Infrastructure & Configuration Management

- Manage environment-specific config promotions and secrets management (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault)
- Ensure zero-downtime deployment strategies: blue/green, canary, and rolling updates
- Execute configuration comparison across QA, Pre-prod and Production environments
- Review PR checklists covering: EPIC completeness, flow impact analysis, NFR compliance, code coverage, and unit test coverage
- Perform replication validation of production deployment on pre prod environment.

4. Database Release Management

- Coordinate schema migrations and data migrations across polyglot database stacks (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Couchbase, Elastic)
- Partner with DBAs to review, test, and schedule backward-compatible DDL changes
- Ensure migration rollback plans exist for every release
- Oversee data remediation MOP preparation and obtain DBA/Designer/EM approvals before release

5. Runbook & MOP Ownership

- Author step-by-step runbooks covering execution sequence, expected timings, approver/reviewer names, rollback steps, and PR & Docker image details
- Prepare MOPs for all applicable release items — particularly manual activities such as DB field additions, template creation/activation, and config changes
- Conduct rollback simulation testing in the Staging setting and update runbook accordingly




- Create and maintain the Dependency Matrix mapping EPICs to Microservices for partial rollback analysis

6. Quality Gates & Risk Management

- Define and enforce release quality gates (test coverage, DAST/SAST scans, performance benchmarks)
- Identify, track, and communicate release risks and cross-service dependencies
- Lead post-release retrospectives and blameless post-mortems; maintain an incident escalation playbook
- Conduct pre-release BU (Business Unit) impact assessment and communicate risks to stakeholders

7. Monitoring & Observability

- Verify release health via monitoring dashboards (Datadog, Grafana, CloudWatch, Dynatrace)
- Define and track release KPIs: deployment frequency, change failure rate (CFR), MTTR, and lead time for changes (DORA metrics)
- Coordinate rollback execution when SLOs are breached post-deployment

8. SVC, CR & Approval Management

- Create and drive approvals for SVC (Security Change) tickets and Release Requests (RR)
- Ensure all regulatory, security, and process compliance gates are cleared before production deployment authorization

9. Stakeholder Communication & Release Reviews

- Prepare and present release materials for L3 stakeholder review including release scope, risk summary, and deployment plan
- Facilitate L2 and L1.5 release review sessions for management sign-off
- Communicate release status, delays, and re-scheduling internal and external stakeholders with appropriate approval materials

10. Security, Compliance & Post-Release

- Manage Security Vulnerability (SecEx) ticket status and obtain extension approvals for vulnerabilities deferred to future minor releases
- Lead post-release RCA processes; track and close all open action items before the next release kick-off
- Drive process improvement initiatives in SCM, config validation, automated quality gates, and pre-production environment parity

📌 Change And Release Manager- BSS Domain (Bengaluru)
🏢 Rakuten India
📍 Bengaluru