Release Manager - Finance Applications

About MBRDI\:

Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI), headquartered in Bengaluru with a satellite office in Pune, is the largest R&D center for Mercedes-Benz Group AG outside of Germany. Our mission is to drive innovation and excellence in automotive engineering, digitalization, and sustainable mobility solutions, shaping the future of mobility.

Job Description\: Senior Release Manager

Position Overview

We are seeking a strategic and highly experienced Senior Release Manager to own and evolve our enterprise-wide software release lifecycle. In this role, you will govern the delivery pipeline, orchestrate complex, multi-team deployment strategies, and bridge the gap between executive leadership, engineering, and IT operations. You will be expected to not only manage individual release cycles but also champion process optimization, automation, and governance across the entire organization.

Core Responsibilities

• Strategic Release Governance\: Define, mature, and enforce the overarching enterprise release strategy, establishing KPIs for release quality, velocity, and stability.
• Complex Orchestration\: Lead the coordination of massive, concurrent release streams, managing deep cross-team dependencies and resolving architectural bottlenecks across multiple product lines.
• Risk Mitigation & Incident Leadership\: Perform comprehensive risk assessments for all major deployments; serve as the primary escalation point and decision-maker during critical go/no-go reviews and high-stakes production rollback scenarios.
• CI/CD Optimization\: Partner with Enterprise Architecture and DevOps leadership to architect, scale, and optimize robust CI/CD pipelines, automated testing gates, and environment management workflows.
• Compliance & Audit Ownership\: Standardize change management frameworks (e.g., ITIL) to ensure strict adherence to security, compliance, and regulatory auditing standards without sacrificing engineering velocity.
• Mentorship & Leadership\: Guide and mentor mid-level release coordinators or project managers, cultivating a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement across engineering squads.

Required Qualifications

• Experience\: 10+ years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, or technical project management, with at least 5+ years dedicated exclusively to senior-level release management or release engineering.

• Technical Mastery\: Deep, practical knowledge of branching strategies, feature flagging, infrastructure as code (IaC), and advanced CI/CD toolsets (Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions).
• Agile Governance\: Expert-level command of Jira, Confluence, and enterprise portfolio management tools to track dependencies across hundreds of developers.
• Executive Communication\: Exceptional command-and-control presence with the ability to communicate technical risks, downtime impacts, and deployment statuses clearly to C-level executives.