IT Release Manager - Full-time

DISH is a Fortune 200 company with more than $15 billion in annual revenue that continues to redefine the communications industry. Our legacy is innovation and a willingness to challenge the status quo, including reinventing ourselves. We disrupted the pay-TV industry in the mid-90s with the launch of the DISH satellite TV service, taking on some of the largest U.S. corporations in the process, and grew to be the fourth-largest pay-TV provider. We are doing it again with the first live, internet-delivered TV service – Sling TV – that bucks traditional pay-TV norms and gives consumers a truly new way to access and watch television.

Now we have our sights set on upending the wireless industry and unseating the entrenched incumbent carriers.

We are driven by curiosity, pride, adventure, and a desire to win – it’s in our DNA. We’re looking for people with boundless energy, intelligence, and an overwhelming need to achieve to join our team as we embark on the next chapter of our story.

Opportunity is here. We are DISH.

A Successful Release Manager Will Have The Following Qualifications:

• BS or BA with 2-3 years of project or program management experience; or equivalent experience in enterprise release / testing, or an equivalent combination of experience and education.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to communicate effectively (both in writing and verbally) to interact effectively with software development and test teams, business, IT leadership and infrastructure teams is required. Strong collaboration and facilitation skills are extremely helpful.

• IT experience, having a working knowledge of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Agile methodologies, and Project / Release Management and lifecycles is desired.

• Experience using and extracting data from Rally, Service Now, HP ALM is desired. Strong competency using Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Word and PowerPoint is required. MS Access familiarity is highly valued.

A Release Manager is responsible for the planning, execution, communication, monitoring and reporting of release deployments at the enterprise level. They work with almost all IT teams, as well as with business stakeholders and IT leadership. During the release cycle, they are responsible for communicating release content, key milestones, status, risks and next steps. Most often, two release cycles will overlap, and the release manager is responsible for highlighting and communicating the status of both. Monitor change requests in the release. Coordinate drop to test and deployment activities. Hold a retrospective after each release for key stakeholders and participants, capturing and following through on lessons learned and actionable process improvements, and providing a release report card after completion. Will take point on escalations when critical issues arise, but generally works effectively through conflict with the teams. A Release Manager needs to be self-motivated, curious, independent, driven, and skilled at working with cross-functional teams and leaders.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Coordination with, and communication to, key stakeholders on release schedules, content, status, and key milestones.
• Lead / facilitate large cross-functional meetings to track status, detect and mitigate risk, and keep efforts aligned and focused on delivering value with each deployment. Hold necessary weekly/daily or ad hoc meetings, taking and distributing key meeting notes to stakeholders to ensure clear understanding and direction, and to help mitigate risk.
• Tag release-related software change requests, ensuring that they are pertinent to the current release and have been approved. Work across infrastructure, dev, data and test teams on drop to test day efforts and release deployment efforts. Lead release day efforts and communications until completion when the bridge shuts down, sending the final report.
• Track to release schedules, milestones and deliverables, including communicating as necessary to status reports to, and risk mitigation with, IT leaders. Effective enterprise-wide communication to business and management stakeholders, software development, testing, analysts, architects and infrastructure/operations teams.
• Communicate priorities, risks and dependencies within release cycles. Consistently monitor and report on the release status to all stakeholders throughout the release cycle. Create and present reports defining project progress, status, challenges and solutions.
• Drive continuous improvement efforts, seeking and obtaining buy-in from IT leadership.
• Track historical trends using Rally, Service Now, and other company tools so that the team and organization can build on and utilize lessons learned from previous releases.
• Work as a dynamic leader across impacted teams and stakeholders. Be actively engaged in relentless process improvement across the organization, especially as it pertains to enterprise releases. Participate in departmental innovation meetings to generate ideas to improve technology, systems and processes.