Release Manager - Sap Platform

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed. As proof, Costco ranks seventh in Forbes "World's Best Employers".
This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco's success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.
Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.
Release Managers are responsible for the release lifecycle. This includes the planning, scheduling, coordinating and overall management of the software build process through the different stages within Costco's delivery lifecycle. Release Managers are responsible for creating detailed integrated release plans across several products and dependencies, for improving the software build process, and for optimizing the release pipeline. Release Managers build and maintain relationships with stakeholders, team members and peers and are responsible for communicating release expectations and statuses across value streams, program stakeholders and impacted users.
The SAP PlatformRelease Manager manages and orchestrates the cross-organizational efforts required to introduce applications, infrastructure and middleware changes into both the non-production and production environments. The SAP PlatformRelease Manager is responsible for ensuring all capabilities required to package changes for delivery to users are in place, while maintaining the integrity and availability of the existing system. The SAP PlatformRelease Manager is responsible for setting and communicating release expectations across all involved teams and impacted users.
If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies "to work for", simply apply and let your career be reimagined.
ROLE
• Facilitates integrated release planning sessions in conjunction with teams and product team members (e.g., Product Managers, Solution Architects) to align on release objectives, identify dependencies across product teams and value streams, define milestones, and provide automated deployments and set configurations.
• Creates deployment plans and accompanying checklists to ensure dependencies are identified and managed.
• Creates and manages the Request For Change (RFC) end to end process.
• Creates and maintains the change management calendar in conjunction with IT change management standards.
• Communicates release milestones and activity progress to all program stakeholders and team members.
• Creates and maintains the integrated project delivery plan across all impacted products (within and across value streams).
• Facilitates the documentation of rollback strategies, hypercare support, and handoffs to production support teams.
• Builds operational readiness plan (e.g. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), run book, call trees with escalations, etc.) to ensure broader teams are prepared for deployment.
• Develops and maintains formal release records to track release content.
• Coordinates the release/deployment of the QA build to support User Acceptance Testing (UAT) activities as part of Costco's release schedule.
• Collaborates with program stakeholders to obtain final sign-off to release a build.
• Communicates release impediments and collaborates with teams to define mitigation strategies.
• Supports/serves multiple teams and Product Managers to drive release goals and outcomes.
• Coordinates the execution of all code deployments to production environments using appropriate tools and tracking mechanisms.
• Coordinates the resolution of portfolio-related production issues due to build and deployment errors with the support of environment and tooling teams.
• Provides teams and program stakeholders with coaching on organizational release management practices and disciplines.
• Assembles and leads multiple cross-functional teams to support IT application releases of varying sizes, including building and maintaining release distribution lists.
• Defines and manages release readiness activities and success criteria in conjunction with program stakeholders.
• Builds and maintains relationships with stakeholders, team members and peers.
• Identifies automation tools to automate build and release pipelines to improve the speed and reliability of the release process.
• Ensures version control for added traceability and reliability of code to track code evolutions.
• Facilitates post-release retrospectives.
• Manages, organizes, and directs work for building and maintaining software, and infrastructure releases for their promotion through a series of non-production SAP landscapes, and leading to a production environment deployment.
• Manages and drives deployment risk mitigation practices (i.e., back out/contingency planning) for the duration of the release cycle to ensure an organized and successful deployment
• Develops and stewards the Release Management process, along with establishing specific standards to govern the process.
• Coordinates/consumes production releases, support packs, retro-fits, and changes from all projects within the program landscape.
• Ensures strategies are developed for effectively managing change across the solution landscape and platform.
• Establishes and communicates release expectations, milestones, and release activity progress across all involved teams.
• Provides reports for and across all involved teams.
• Develops and maintains a release management discipline based on experience, best practices, and proven methodologies.
• Facilitates planning and documentation of rollback strategies, hypercare support, and handoff to production support teams.
• Facilitates the execution of mock and production cutovers.
• Conducts release readiness reviews, deployment planning meetings, and Go/No-Go meetings.
• Creates and owns a lesson learned document and drives change to continually improve the release process.
• Assures appropriate change management processes are followed for all required technical changes (e.g., patching, OSS notes) and have been applied to all appropriate environments.
• Coordinates with various teams to manage release scheduling for all in scope applications and maintains the master release schedule. Proactively plans system patching and application upgrades/enhancements to minimize release impact and risk.
• Communicates and coordinates with all stakeholders to ensure the required training and/or communication is provided to the affected user community (Service Desk, OCM, Business, IT).
• Documents to ensure that approved entrance/exit criteria artifacts required for production deployment are in place.
• Documents pre and post-deployment issue resolution within defined SLAs.
• Identifies and resolves problems often anticipating issues before they occur or before they grow; develops and evaluates options and implements solutions.
• Partners with Project Manager(s) on development release strategy and deployment plans.
REQUIRED
• Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills as well as a positive attitude.
• Strong communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Strong organizational and planning skills, with experience building and executing tactical plans.
• Ability to negotiate timelines and deliverables with a strong sense of urgency.
• Strong process knowledge of System Development Life Cycles; Waterfall and Agile.
• Flexible, must be able to change priorities quickly, focus on new ones without distraction, be able to deal with conflict, and work under pressure to meet deliverable dates/timelines.
• Scheduling flexibility to meet the needs of the business, including 24x7x365 operations; evening, weekend, and holiday work required during release cycles.
Recommended
• Project Management Certification a plus.
Required Documents
• Cover Letter
• Resume
California applicants, please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.
Pay Ranges:
Level 3 - $115,000 - $145,000
Level 4 - $135,000 - $170,000
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.
Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com
If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States. Applicants and employees for this position will not be sponsored for work authorization, including, but not limited to H1-B visas.