Release Mgr - 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

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

Position Summary 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 Platform Release 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 Platform Release 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 Platform Release Manager is responsible for setting and communicating release expectations across all involved teams and impacted users. *This position will be filled onsite in Issaquah, WA, Chicago, IL, or Dallas, TX

Job Duties/Essential Functions 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, organizes, and directs releases that comprise of cross-functional teams, and a multitude of interrelated and independent application and/or infrastructure changes

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

Creates deployment plans in smartsheets, and ensures dependencies are identified and managed accordingly

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, kick-offs, deployment planning meetings, and Go/No-Go meetings

Creates and owns a lessons 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

Regular and reliable workplace attendance at your assigned location

Ability to operate vehicles, equipment or machinery Computer, phone, printer, copier, fax Non-Essential Functions Assists in other areas of the department as necessary

Assists in other areas of the company as necessary

Ability to operate vehicles, equipment or machinery Same as Essential Functions Experience, Skills, Education & Licenses/Certifications Required: Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills as well as a positive attitude

Strong communication skills, both verbal and written

Excellent organizational and planning skills, with experience building deployment/cutover plans

Experience in negotiating timelines and deliverables with a strong sense of urgency

Strong process knowledge of System Development Life Cycles

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. 24x7x365 operations - evening, weekend, and holiday work may be required

Recommended: Project Management Certification a plus

Smartsheet knowledge

Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail

Successful internal candidates will have spent one year or more on their current team

Other Conditions Management will review the Job Analysis for this position prior to a job offer. [Add Years of Experience] Level 1 X - years of experience Level 2 X - years of experience Level 3 X - years of experience Level 4 X - years of experience