Lead Release Manager
Clarivate · Kansas City
We are looking for an experienced Release Manager to join our Enterprise Applications & Data Services team in Philadelphia. This is an opportunity to become the central point of coordination for complex enterprise software releases across multiple products, platforms and strategic initiatives. Reporting to the Director, Engineering Operations, you will partner with Product, Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security and business stakeholders to make releases predictable, transparent, compliant and low risk.
This is not a hands-on deployment role. You will bring structure to the end-to-end release process, lead release readiness and go/no-go discussions, manage risks and dependencies, and ensure that the right approvals, communications and controls are in place before changes reach production.
About You – experience, education, skills, and accomplishments
- At least 7 years of professional experience in Release Management, Technical Program/Project Management, IT Change Management, Delivery Management, or a closely related area.
- At least 7 years of experience working within enterprise software delivery environments, with responsibility for coordinating releases across multiple applications, products, or technical teams.
- Demonstrated experience owning end-to-end release activities, including release calendars, release readiness reviews, go/no-go decisions, production cutovers, and post-release stabilization.
- Demonstrated experience leading or representing software releases through Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Change Management processes, including production change approvals.
- Demonstrated experience managing release risks, dependencies, escalations, and rollback or contingency plans for enterprise production releases.
- Experience supporting audit, compliance, and release governance requirements, including approvals, testing evidence, change records, and release documentation.
- Experience working within Agile/SDLC and CI/CD or DevOps delivery environments, using Jira, ServiceNow, or equivalent release/change management tools.
It would be great if you also have . .
- Experience supporting Salesforce, SaaS applications, hybrid or multi-cloud environments, or enterprise platforms such as NetSuite, Oracle EBS or Boomi.
- Experience with Confluence, SharePoint, Azure DevOps, GitHub or CI/CD pipeline tooling.
- An ITIL, PMP, SAFe, PMI-ACP, Scrum or similar relevant certification.
- Experience supporting enterprise transformation programs and using release metrics such as release success rate, deployment lead time or mean time to restore.
What will you be doing in this role?
- Own, maintain and publish the enterprise release calendar, coordinating release scope, manifests, milestones and deployment timelines across multiple products and platforms.
- Lead release planning, readiness reviews, stakeholder alignment sessions and go/no-go decisions, ensuring that required testing, approvals and sign-offs are complete.
- Coordinate delivery activities across Product, Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security and business teams, resolving scheduling conflicts and competing priorities.
- Identify and manage release risks, blockers, dependencies and resource constraints, creating mitigation, escalation, rollback and contingency plans.
- Represent releases in CAB and change-control forums, ensuring production changes follow enterprise governance and approval workflows.
- Develop implementation and cutover plans for major initiatives, coordinate go-lives and release war rooms, and support post-release validation and stabilization.
- Own clear release communications, including maintenance and downtime notifications, vendor upgrade impacts, release announcements and executive status reporting.
- Maintain audit-ready release records and evidence, and ensure compliance with established release controls and policies.
- Establish release KPIs, analyze failures and process gaps, and partner with Engineering and DevOps teams to improve release predictability, efficiency and quality.
About the Team
The Enterprise Data & Integration Services team includes enterprise and solution architects, Product Owners, software engineers, data analysts, and other technology professionals supporting enterprise applications, data, integration, and emerging AI capabilities.
In this role, you will work across Product Management, Software Development, QA and Automation, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, Change Management, Audit and business teams. The team values clear ownership, practical governance, transparency and continuous improvement. You will serve as a trusted partner who connects these groups and keeps complex releases moving toward a safe and successful production launch.
Hours of Work
This is a full-time, permanent position, primarily working core business hours in the Eastern time zone, with flexibility to support planned production releases, cutovers and collaboration across time zones when required.
This is a hybrid position based in Philadelphia, working in the office up to 3 days per week
At Clarivate, we are committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all qualified persons with respect to hiring, compensation, promotion, training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. We comply with applicable laws and regulations governing non-discrimination in all locations.