Senior Manager, Software Product & Release Operations

Aurora•San Francisco, CA

2d•$162,000 - $287,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Aurora’s Product Operations team partners with Product, Operations, and Engineering to deliver commercial operations capabilities on time, safely, and efficiently. The Software Product & Release Operations function owns the release cadence and readiness of software Aurora ships, connecting engineering roadmaps with operational readiness. The Senior Manager will lead the end-to-end software release cycle, from build readiness through rollout, as Aurora scales production. The role owns software Go/No-Go decisions and translates engineering roadmaps into operational readiness plans. It partners closely with Aurora Driver and Service Engineering, Launch Operations, Product Ops & Platform Enablement, and leaders across Engineering, Product, and Commercial Operations. The position reports to the Senior Director, Product Operations and is based in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, or Dallas, with travel to test sites and partner facilities as needed. The role establishes enterprise release strategy, readiness and risk governance, cross-functional roadmap alignment, release metrics, and feature and defect escalation processes. It also coordinates releases involving software and hardware or platform changes, with hardware/platform Go/No-Go authority remaining with Product Ops & Platform Enablement. Aurora expects employees to work from the office at least three days per week; some roles may require up to five days per week based on operational needs. The role contributes to Aurora’s commitment to safety and is expected to prioritize safe work practices.

Requirements

At least 7 years of experience in program/product operations, technical program management, or release management, ideally in a software-driven environment with adjacent hardware dependencies.
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 and credibility with both Engineering and Operations.
Comfort working in a fast-scaling, R&D-to-commercial transition environment and building repeatable processes without over-engineering them around a changing technical target.
Strong analytical and communication skills, including the ability to translate technical release data into clear, actionable recommendations for technical and executive audiences.
Technical fluency in software release management, strong executive presence, and the ability to influence stakeholders without direct authority.

Nice To Haves

Experience in autonomous vehicles, automotive, or another safety-critical software domain.
Familiarity with interactions between software releases and hardware/platform dependencies.
Background in technical program management or software release engineering.
Experience with BI tools such as Tableau, Looker, or PowerBI for release metrics tracking.
Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, or equivalent tools for release and backlog tracking.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the enterprise customer and operations release strategy across software, autonomous systems, and fleet operations.
Define company-wide release readiness and risk-gating standards and serve as the accountable authority for the evaluation framework used to clear commercial deployments.
Align multi-year capability roadmaps with commercial and business go-to-market expansion targets in partnership with Engineering, Product, and Commercial Operations leaders.
Unify release governance across interdependent software, hardware, and platform changes, resolving trade-offs and cross-departmental dependencies when release timelines conflict with operational readiness.
Define, own, and report enterprise release predictability, defect escape metrics, and roadmap-to-readiness lead times for executive leadership.
Standardize backlog hygiene and defect escalation pathways across software and operational release pipelines, maintaining feedback loops between field performance and Engineering.
Own and evolve the software release and change management cycle from build readiness through rollout in partnership with Software Engineering.
Manage feature and bug tracking and ensure issues do not fall between Engineering and Operations.
Coordinate mixed software and hardware/platform releases with Product Ops & Platform Enablement, deferring hardware/platform Go/No-Go authority to that team.
Travel to test sites and partner facilities as needed.