Role Overview
We are looking for an experienced and customer-focused Client Release Manager to manage the end-to-end software release lifecycle. The role involves release planning, governance, readiness, customer communication, deployment coordination, and post-release reviews.
The candidate will act as a key point of contact for customers regarding planned software releases, ensuring that releases are delivered on schedule, risks are managed effectively, and all technical and business stakeholders remain aligned.
Key Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end release planning, scheduling, coordination, and governance for software releases.
- Maintain release schedules, dependencies, Jira versions, and associated tickets.
- Coordinate release readiness activities, including testing, approvals, risk assessments, and Go/No-Go decisions.
- Identify release risks and dependencies and ensure appropriate contingency and rollback plans are in place.
- Act as the primary customer contact for planned releases, communicating scope, timelines, potential impact, and required customer actions.
- Coordinate customer acceptance testing (UAT), feedback, and formal release sign-offs.
- Support customer Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings and ensure compliance with change-management processes.
- Prepare and maintain release notes, deployment documentation, post-deployment reports, and rollback procedures.
- Coordinate with Product, Development, QA, Technical Operations, and Service Desk teams to ensure release readiness.
- Ensure development, system, and regression testing activities are completed before releases.
- Coordinate environment readiness, build requirements, and deployment prerequisites.
- Maintain accurate release documentation and records in Jira, SharePoint, or similar platforms.
- Conduct post-release reviews and drive continuous improvements in release-management processes.
Required Skills & Experience
- Proven experience in software Release Management, preferably within SaaS, managed services, or enterprise technology environments.
- Strong understanding of software release processes, change control, and IT service transition.
- Experience coordinating technical and business teams to deliver releases within agreed timelines.
- Strong customer-facing communication and stakeholder-management skills.
- Hands-on experience with Jira or similar project/work-management tools.
- Experience preparing release plans, status reports, release notes, and customer-facing documentation.
- Understanding of release risk assessment, testing, deployment readiness, and rollback planning.
- Excellent organisational skills, attention to detail, and ability to manage multiple releases and competing priorities.