Director, Release Engineering
Job Title: Director of Release Engineering
Location: Chicago, IL (On-site)
Compensation: $190,000-275,000 base salary plus annual performance bonus
Employment Type: Full-time
About the Role
A Chicago based financial services firm is seeking a seasoned Director of Release Engineering to lead and evolve their change and release management practices. This is a critical leadership role responsible for overseeing the end-to-end release lifecycle, ensuring the stability, scalability, and security of their hybrid infrastructure. You will manage a high-performing team and collaborate cross-functionally to drive continuous improvement in their deployment pipelines and infrastructure operations.
Key Responsibilities
- Own and optimize the change and release management processes, ensuring compliance, traceability, and minimal disruption to production systems.
- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of release engineers and DevOps professionals.
- Design and implement scalable release strategies across hybrid Linux and AWS environments.
- Oversee the deployment and lifecycle management of Kubernetes-based infrastructure.
- Collaborate with engineering, QA, product, and security teams to ensure smooth and secure software delivery.
- Establish and monitor KPIs for release quality, velocity, and system reliability.
- Drive automation and tooling improvements to support CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (IaC).
- Serve as a subject matter expert in release engineering best practices and governance within a regulated financial environment.
Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in release engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure roles, with at least 3 years in a leadership capacity.
- Proven expertise in Linux systems administration and AWS cloud services.
- Deep understanding of Kubernetes orchestration, Helm, and container lifecycle management.
- Strong background in CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD) and configuration management (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
- Experience working in regulated industries, preferably financial services.
- Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (Master's preferred)
This role must sit out of the firms Chicago office working in a hybrid model of 3 days in office per week.
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