Release Manager - IT International eCommerce at Costco in Issaquah, WA

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 eighth 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.

Release Managers collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to coordinate, orchestrate, and execute the efforts required to introduce application changes into production for delivery to end-users. Among other responsibilities, they are accountable for creating detailed and executable integrated release plans across several products and dependencies, improving the software build process, and optimizing the release pipeline. The Release Manager will provide leadership and oversight through the release process for quarterly feature releases, monthly maintenance releases, hot fixes, and configuration changes, as needed.

The IT International eCommerce team is seeking a skilled and experienced Release Manager to lead our dynamic team in delivering cutting-edge solutions to our diverse global markets.

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 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 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.

● Develops and stewards the Release Management process, establishing specific standards to govern it.

● Outlines and manages the Request For Change (RFC) end-to-end process, including logging formal release tickets, creating/maintaining all required release documentation, gaining required approvals, executing release plans, and maintaining a release calendar in line with IT standards.

● Partners with the appropriate team members to coordinate the execution of all code deployments to production environments using appropriate tools and tracking mechanisms; documents and manages any production issues that are the result of the deployment process.

● Identifies critical success factors and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure and report on release quality.

● Generates and publishes release-related reports and facilitates post-release retrospectives in an effort to drive continuous improvement of the release process and minimize the risk of future deployments.

● Connects development, QA, Project Management, Infrastructure, Operations, and other IT teams to support the related changes for product and project portfolio roadmaps, and ensure the Build, Deploy, Release team can proactively prepare for future needs.

● Coordinates environment refresh cycles with various enterprise teams to minimize release impact and sustain system integrity and availability.

REQUIRED

● Quantifiable and demonstrated experience as an IT Release Manager.

● Knowledge and experience of Change Management processes.

● Strong organizational and planning skills, with experience building and executing tactical plans.

● Strong process knowledge of System Development Life Cycles and Agile Methodologies.

● Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills.

● Ability to negotiate timelines and deliverables with a strong sense of urgency.

● Flexible; able to change priorities quickly, focus on new ones without distraction; able to deal with conflict, and work under pressure to meet deliverable dates/timelines.

● Scheduling flexibility to meet the needs of the business, including evening, weekend, and holiday work required during release cycles; 24x7x365 operations.

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.

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