Lead Release Manager

Clarivate • Leawood, KS

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Lead Release Manager is part of the Enterprise Applications & Data Services team in Philadelphia and serves as the central coordinator for complex enterprise software releases across multiple products, platforms, and strategic initiatives. Reporting to the Director, Engineering Operations, this role partners with Product, Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, and business stakeholders to make releases predictable, transparent, compliant, and low risk. It is not a hands-on deployment role; the focus is on structuring the end-to-end release process, leading readiness and go/no-go discussions, managing risks and dependencies, and ensuring appropriate approvals, communications, and controls before production changes.

The role owns the enterprise release calendar and coordinates release planning, governance, cutovers, communications, audit-ready records, and post-release stabilization. It also establishes release KPIs and works with Engineering and DevOps teams to improve release predictability, efficiency, and quality.

The position works across Product Management, Software Development, QA and Automation, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, Change Management, Audit, and business teams. It is a full-time, permanent hybrid position based in Philadelphia, working in the office up to three days per week. Work is primarily during core Eastern time zone business hours, with flexibility to support planned production releases, cutovers, and cross-time-zone collaboration when required.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of professional experience in Release Management, Technical Program or Project Management, IT Change Management, Delivery Management, or a closely related area.
• At least 7 years of experience in enterprise software delivery environments, coordinating releases across multiple applications, products, or technical teams.
• Demonstrated experience owning end-to-end release activities, including release calendars, readiness reviews, go/no-go decisions, production cutovers, and post-release stabilization.
• Demonstrated experience leading or representing software releases through Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Change Management processes, including production change approvals.
• Demonstrated experience managing release risks, dependencies, escalations, and rollback or contingency plans for enterprise production releases.
• Experience supporting audit, compliance, and release governance requirements, including approvals, testing evidence, change records, and release documentation.
• Experience working within Agile/SDLC and CI/CD or DevOps delivery environments, using Jira, ServiceNow, or equivalent release/change management tools.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting Salesforce, SaaS applications, hybrid or multi-cloud environments, or enterprise platforms such as NetSuite, Oracle EBS, or Boomi.
• Experience with Confluence, SharePoint, Azure DevOps, GitHub, or CI/CD pipeline tooling.
• An ITIL, PMP, SAFe, PMI-ACP, Scrum, or similar relevant certification.
• Experience supporting enterprise transformation programs and using release metrics such as release success rate, deployment lead time, or mean time to restore.

Responsibilities

• Own, maintain, and publish the enterprise release calendar, coordinating release scope, manifests, milestones, and deployment timelines across multiple products and platforms.
• Lead release planning, readiness reviews, stakeholder alignment sessions, and go/no-go decisions, ensuring required testing, approvals, and sign-offs are complete.
• Coordinate delivery activities across Product, Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, and business teams, resolving scheduling conflicts and competing priorities.
• Identify and manage release risks, blockers, dependencies, and resource constraints, and create mitigation, escalation, rollback, and contingency plans.
• Represent releases in Change Advisory Board (CAB) and change-control forums, ensuring production changes follow enterprise governance and approval workflows.
• Develop implementation and cutover plans for major initiatives, coordinate go-lives and release war rooms, and support post-release validation and stabilization.
• Own release communications, including maintenance and downtime notifications, vendor upgrade impacts, release announcements, and executive status reporting.
• Maintain audit-ready release records and evidence, and ensure compliance with established release controls and policies.
• Establish release KPIs, analyze failures and process gaps, and partner with Engineering and DevOps teams to improve release predictability, efficiency, and quality.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed