Staff Technical Program Manager, Release Management

Aurora•Mountain View, CA

5d•$163,000 - $290,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone. At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. As a Staff Technical Program Manager (Release Management), you will report to the Manager of Release Management and join our Software Product-Design team. This is a senior individual contributor (IC) role that balances strategic release architecture and automation with hands-on, day-to-day release train execution. We are hiring for this role to help drive scale and automation in our release operations for predictive prevention, establishing robust automated release gating as our commercial driverless fleet scales from a dozen vehicles to thousands. This is a high-impact opportunity for a force multiplier who thrives on combining hands-on tactical execution with long-term operational scale. You are highly motivated to remove manual friction, manage release operations, and automate software release and deployment frameworks in a safety-critical, high-velocity environment.

Requirements

7+ Years of Hands-On Release Experience: Technical program management, release engineering, or systems engineering background with direct, day-to-day release train execution and managing software-hardware integrations in complex environments.
Safety-Critical Domain Expertise: Experience working under strict safety-regulated standards (such as ISO 26262, DO-178C, or ISO 13485) within automotive, aerospace, medical or robotics, with strong configuration management, baseline, and change control practices.
Tactical Build & CI/CD Execution: Practical, hands-on technical experience with CI/CD build automation tools (e.g., Buildkite, GitHub Actions) and monorepo build systems (e.g., Bazel) to troubleshoot and execute daily release operations at scale.
Complex Branching & Daily Triage: Proven track record of orchestrating concurrent release branches, running hands-on daily build/release triage, and executing hotfix deployments across diverse teams and hardware platforms.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Governance: Collaborative track record of partnering across engineering, safety, hardware, and test operations teams to establish transparent governance, shared release visibility, and cross-team trust.
Customer & Team Support Mindset: Strong team player willing to support internal operations, external partners, and high-priority releases with occasional evening or weekend coverage as needed.
Ability to travel to engineering centers in Mountain View, CA, Terminal Operations in Texas or Pittsburgh, PA as business needs arise.

Nice To Haves

Direct, hands-on experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, machine learning systems, or complex cyber-physical environments.
Practical experience applying ML/AI tooling to day-to-day release operations, such as automated test-failure classification, triage automation, or pipeline anomaly detection.
Passion for building self-service release tooling and reducing operational friction while fostering seamless cross-functional alignment and developer enablement.
Practical familiarity with cloud environments (AWS) and progressive deployment methodologies (feature flagging, progressive delivery, service dependency ordering).
Proven capability to manage day-to-day edge cases and unknown release risks by establishing team-wide visibility and proactive build health tracking.

Responsibilities

Own and execute the end-to-end release cycle, including orchestrating regular release train schedules, managing branch cut-offs, running daily release/build triage, and coordinating hotfix deployments across software and vehicle platforms.
Serve as the primary operational hub for release readiness, driving daily alignment across engineering, safety, hardware, and test operations teams while maintaining transparent release communications and dashboards.
Shift release operations toward predictive prevention by identifying and eliminating manual friction points, automating release workflows, and utilizing AI/ML tools for triage classification and anomaly detection.
Help architect and maintain automated "Release Gates" that auto-assemble compliance evidence using structured data (Single Source of Truth), ensuring rigorous quality and safety standards before release promotion.
Govern and orchestrate concurrent release branches across diverse customers, hardware configurations, and Operational Design Domains (ODDs), maintaining absolute branching hygiene and change control.
Treat release documentation and launch reports with software-grade discipline—ensuring version control, complete auditability, and safety compliance without introducing operational bottlenecks.