Release Manager

Who We Are

VML, part of WPP, is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and human first, award-winning work for blue chip client partners including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's. The agency is recognized by the Forrester Wave™ Reports, as a Leader among Marketing Creative and Content Service Providers, Commerce Services, Global Digital Experience Services, Global Marketing Services and, most recently, Marketing Measurement & Optimization. In addition, VML’s specialist health network, VML Health, is one of the world’s largest and most awarded health agencies. VML’s global network is powered by 26,000 talented people across 55+ markets, with principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

The opportunity:

Overview

An experienced Release Manager with 3+ years of DevOps related release management, who leads teams to follow best practices in development standards and coding reviews.   You have an enthusiasm for learning new skills and initiative to deliver the best outcomes for our clients.

You will be primarily responsible the management and protection of releases through, where appropriate, Build/Develop, QA, UAT, Pre-Prod and Production environments for Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Responsibilities

• Negotiating, planning, and managing all release activities.
• Analysing risks and resolving issues that affect release scope, schedule, and quality.
• Working cohesively with external partners, suppliers, and product owners.
• Develop common strategies for release governance across multiple systems
• Communicate release details and schedules to the Business as required.
• Act as guardian to uphold the integrity of the branching strategy and ensure processes are optimised to enable frequent and smooth releases
• Know and understand impacts of branches and code merges in the repositories used by the dev teams.
• Work with third party managed-hosting providers to increase automated processes end-to-end
• Work with the development teams.
• Coach and help automate release processes.
• Inform senior management of enterprise-wide exposure to release risk and effectively mitigate it
• Create, track, and maintain a published release and deployment calendar.
• Know the tech stack of the development process so you can participate and discuss with the development teams the challenges of the full delivery workflow. A core background in eCommerce technologies is a must.
• Maintain release documentation and manage key information such as build and release procedures, dependencies, and notification lists.
• Work with Infrastructure teams to improve a process, pass awareness of potential problems risks and oversee that the process is fit for the Release process needs.
• Work closely with Project Management to ensure the efficiency of the delivery of Programmes and Projects (Control, Plan, Measure, Predict and React).
• Work with Service Management in the Post-Mortem analysis and improvements identification.
• Understand Infrastructure where applications will be deployedand the different technologies that can be involved in a complex ecommerce environment. This way you should build bridges between the product delivered and Infrastructure that supports it

Required skills/experience

• Experience in DevOps related release management including implementing and managing the release management lifecycle
• Experience in software development, preferably on web (e-commerce) sites.
• Knowledge in software build, repository, and maintenance tools like Jenkins, Bitbucket or any other automation build and deployment tools.
• Experience working in agile environments with SCRUM methodologies.
• Passionate about delivering quality software and defending the customer/end-user perspective.
• Good communication skills and teamwork believer.
• Good technical understanding required in Investigating, resolving  and triaging release defects 
• Strong time management & organisational skills.
• Interested in automating things.
• You like to learn and investigate new technologies that the company is working with or will work in the future.
• Experience in Continuous Integration, Delivery, Deploy methodologies.
• Excellent negotiation skills and an ability to handle sensitive issues with tact and diplomacy.

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.
We empower your Brains for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.
And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

WPP (VML Enterprise Solutions) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. 

VML is a WPP Agency. For more information, please visit our website, and follow VML on our social channels via Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. 

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