- Company Name
- Ricoh Europe
- Job Title
- Release & Deployment Manager
- Job Description
-
**Job Title**
Release & Deployment Manager
**Role Summary**
Lead enterprise-wide release and deployment processes, ensuring timely, compliant, and risk-managed delivery of software changes. Own the release calendar, coordinate multi-team activities, drive automation, and continuously improve processes for operational stability and governance.
**Expectations**
- Manage the end‑to‑end release lifecycle across complex, multi‑system environments.
- Maintain governance, change control, and risk management standards.
- Deliver clear, accurate release documentation and post‑implementation reporting.
- Champion automation and tool adoption to increase efficiency and traceability.
- Foster collaboration with application, platform, QA, DevOps, and design teams.
**Key Responsibilities**
- Develop, manage, and improve release strategy, policies, and processes.
- Own and maintain the Enterprise IT Release Calendar.
- Schedule and coordinate complex, cross‑system release windows.
- Prepare packaging, build, and deployment work across test, pre‑prod, and production.
- Collaborate with Applications Support, Platforms Engineering, DevOps, QA, and Solution Design to validate readiness, plan rollbacks, and communicate changes.
- Ensure releases comply with governance, change control, and risk frameworks.
- Produce and manage release notes, deployment plans, and post‑implementation reports.
- Drive automation, tool integration, and process optimization.
- Align release timing with environment strategy in partnership with Environment Management.
- Lead retrospectives, capture lessons learned, and implement improvements.
**Required Skills**
- Strong understanding of SDLC, CI/CD pipelines, and ITIL change management.
- Proficiency with release/automation tools (e.g., Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD, Octopus Deploy, Jira, ServiceNow).
- Analytical, problem‑solving, and risk‑management capabilities.
- Leadership, communication, and stakeholder‑management skills.
- Experience in process optimisation, automation, and cross‑team collaboration.
- Ability to establish and grow a Release & Deployment function from scratch.
**Required Education & Certifications**
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field.
- Additional certifications in release management, DevOps, or ITIL are highly desirable.