Release Manager - IT Membership

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.

The Costco Membership Release Manager coordinates and orchestrates the efforts required to introduce application changes into production for delivery to end-users. The Release Manager is responsible for setting and communicating release expectations, milestones, and statuses; creating and sending post-release reports to all involved parties and impacted users from end-user to enterprise leadership.

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.

● Orchestrates and reports weekly, monthly, and project release activities within the Costco Membership development life cycle which includes, but is not limited to, business relations, infrastructure, change management, service desk representatives, and other related teams to ensure awareness, successful operational handoffs, deployment, and acceptance.

● 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.

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

● Adheres and contributes to improvements to the release process that support quality releases and minimize risk to the production and non-production environments.

● Establishes and communicates release expectations, milestones, and release activity progress; provides reports for and across all involved teams.

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

● Creates and maintains required release documentation that supports any given release through its production life cycle.

● Maintains and controls risks for the duration of the release cycle to ensure a well-organized and successful deployment.

● Tracks to ensure that approved entrance/exit criteria required for production deployment are in place.

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

● Works with the various enterprise teams to proactively plan system patching and application upgrades/enhancements to minimize release impact and risk.

REQUIRED

● Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills.

● 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 and Agile Methodologies.

● Familiarity of Change Management processes

● 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.

Recommended

● 3+ years' experience in IT; BA/BS degree in computer science or related technical field is preferred.

● Costco membership background.

● Certified Scrum Master.

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.