Release Manager - eCommerce

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. In 2018, Costco contributed over $39 million to organizations such as United Way and Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the second largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in twelve 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 consistently ranks in the top five of Forbes “America’s Best Employers”.

The eCommerce Release Manager is responsible for the release lifecycle. This includes the planning, scheduling, coordinating, deploying and overall management of the software build process through the different stages within Costco's delivery lifecycle. Release Managers are responsible for creating detailed readiness checklists and integrated release plans across several products and dependencies, while improving the software build process, and for optimizing the release pipeline. Release Managers are not only responsible for obtaining deployment approval, but manage the release activities into production during the scheduled maintenance windows. 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.

If you want to be a part of one of the BEST “to work for” companies in the world, 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 readiness 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 and deployment of the QA build to support Performance and 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.
  

REQUIRED

• 4+ years of eCommerce release management experience including deployment using a maintenance window.


• Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills as well as a positive attitude.


• 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; Waterfall and Agile.
  
• Flexible, must be 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.


• 24x7x365 operations including evening, weekend, and holiday work required during release cycles.
  

Recommended

• 7+ years’ experience in IT; BA/BS degree in computer science or related technical field is preferred.


• Familiarity with eCommerce.


• Knowledge of Websphere Commerce, Order Management or Order Fulfillment systems.


• Project Management Certification (PMP) or related experience.
  
• Certified Scrum Master.
  

Required Documents

• Cover Letter


• Resume

California applicants, please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.

Apart from any religious or disability considerations, open availability is needed to meet the needs of the business. 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.