Sr. Lead Release Manager

The Lead Sr. Release Manager role requires the technical awareness to dissect complex problems and drive discussions with cross-functional teams. If you thrive as a generalist, tackling varied and evolving problems and opportunities, we want to talk to you. This is a great opportunity to hop into a role with a broad and deep impact in a domain that has a mix of components already running smoothly, several that are partially managed, and some that need to be spun up from scratch. You’ll be starting from a strong foundation with plenty of surface area to make your own.
As the Lead Sr. Release Manager you are a key element of the Live Team and Towerborne project leadership. You’re accountable for empowering the team’s ability to deliver an evolving, living game experience to Towerborne players. Your primary mandate is to make it easier, faster, and safer to deliver player value. This role is responsible for building and executing programs that drive continuous improvement across the entire build lifecycle, leveling up efficiency, clarity, confidence, and repeatability at every phase. 

What You'll Do

• Manage platform certifications and global compliance
• Drive change management and track change requests
• Release readiness, build publishing, configuration promotions through all environments including production
• Build, drive, and evolve programs wrapped around build health, release pipeline, branching strategy, environment management, developer efficiency, change management, and other areas related to end-to-end delivery
• Work closely with the Executive Producer, Live Production, and your direct reports to manage ongoing, overlapping release efforts
• Coordinate test prioritization with internal and external QA teams and evaluate test results as part of the overall story of build readiness and development velocity
• Work with QA and tech owners to ensure active ownership and clear reporting on stability, perf, and errors as part of holistic release readiness and live game health efforts
• Work with engineering and operational teams to build and improve domain tools, workflows, and resources
• Serve as a product owner for core online game and operational systems, helping define requirements and providing key stakeholder review (e.g. hotfixing, version management)
• Report and drive improvement on operational player disruption factors (e.g. downtime duration, patch sizes)
• Manage the program for escalating, managing, and learning from development and live issues in a way that keeps the right people engaged and informed, is low friction for participants and stakeholders, and maintains appropriate process parity between dev and live issue flows
• Lead by example, driving critical development and live issues in a way that ensures calm, clarity, and focus on resolving impact
• Define program success metrics and maintain ongoing reporting on goals, progress, problems, and opportunities
• Drive teamwide standards, expectations, and engagement with release pipeline programs
• Ensure clear knowledge management, reporting, and information flow for all managed programs (e.g. environment deployment status)
• Operationalize your programs for consistency and repeatability with low maintenance, high value resources (runbooks, run of show checklists, etc.)

Must Have

• 7+ years of experience in Release Management or Technical Program Management in the games industry, including at least one multi-platform project
• Strong knowledge of Unreal Engine development and release workflows
• Experience guiding technical and logistical efforts across a wide range of internal stakeholders and external partners
• Experience leading teams and guiding proactive, positive career development of direct reports
• Broad knowledge of build, branch, environment, and release processes for Live games
• Experience driving QA prioritization and reporting processes tied into the release pipeline
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipeline tools as well as DevOps practices and philosophies
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Ability to operate in a highly fluid environment and adapt rapidly to shifting priorities and updated information

Nice to Have

• Experience working with Perforce
• Experience working with TeamCity
• Experience working in the Azure / PlayFab ecosystem

While Stoic is a fully remote, forever remote workforce, this is a US-based role. The person filling this role must be located in the contiguous United States.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
United States Pay Range$140,000 - $170,000 USD
This range is determined by several factors, including training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market demands. It is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
The final job level and compensation will be determined by the candidate’s work experience, years of relevant experience, skills, qualifications, certifications, geographic location, and other business considerations.
We provide reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.
Stoic does NOT offer relocation assistance.
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