Yankees, Angels, Eagles, Seahawks, Lollapalooza, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo…the biggest names in entertainment are our customers. We power the tech behind every t-shirt, hotdog and drink sold at these venues, and at a global list of other clients that you just wouldn’t believe. Didn’t think Point of Sale could be sexy? Think again.

Appetize is looking for a truly exceptional Release Train Engineer with Project Management sensibilities, to work with some of our most important engineering teams. We’re looking for someone who is ready and willing to tackle our active release schedule across mobile & web platforms from not only a deployment perspective, but also a project release scheduling angle. 

This is a critical role, releasing web, mobile, and infrastructure features to tackle an endless, important roadmap at intimidating scale. Imagine Lollapalooza or a hot Yankees game in the middle of summer if you couldn’t buy a beer…unacceptable. The stuff you’ll work on has a very real impact, and our customers will love you or hate you for what you release. What you schedule and deploy matters here.

You should be able to operate without much direction, but be excited to work closely with a

team. You will work alongside QA Engineers/Developers/Project Managers to make sure that all releases run smoothly. 

We have an incredible team with a brilliant culture. Your friends will be jealous when you tell them about your day at work. What are you waiting for? Send us your resume!

Responsibilities:

• Work with project management & cross-functional teams to align release dates for multiple projects.
• Coordinate with Product, QA & Development to plan which features make it into a release.
• Assure deployments/releases run smoothly (all branches are tagged correctly, versioning is correct, etc).
• Keep an eye on pull requests, make sure they point to the right branches, make sure code reviews are being done in a timely manner, etc.
• Track all Fix Versions in Jira - Tag all features with correct fix versions in JIRA, make sure tickets are verified on production after deploys; Manage the administration of all Fix Versions in Jira (release when done, keep Jira Boards up to date)
• Actively participate in Release meetings/discussions.
• Manage and support DevOps and Engineering roadmap for rolling out and documenting new processes, platform, and tools that affect deployments and improve software delivery for business.
• Own Go No/Go Checkpoints leading up to release and share Status of releases to wide internal audience.
• Spearhead a strong, predictable, release strategy for Appetize working with key stakeholders and cross-functional teams.
• Must be willing to shift work day every two weeks to work late afternoon into the evening (we do 1am deployments every 2 weeks).

Qualifications:

• Agile SAFe certification preferred. Or an Agile Release Train Management qualification is critical.
• 3+ years of release management/deployment experience with web-based and mobile platforms (iOS + Android) and in managing multiple release streams at the same time.
• Strong understanding of Engineering platforms and tools including but not limited to effective branching and merging strategies, pull requests, code review, etc. Practiced experience with Jenkins. Knowledge and understanding of release management on Kubernetes or Docker based platforms. 
• Experience with CI/CD workflows using Git, Jenkins for microservices based software platform.
• Experience working with JIRA including being able to create SQL filters to pull the right data.
• Strong experience of the Agile Software Development Life Cycle - ScrumMaster or Project Management experience a +
• Strong attention to detail.
• Excellent communication skills working with key stakeholders - from product to operations.
• Technical problem solving and root cause analysis skills.
• Able to multitask effectively.
• Ability to coordinate matrix teams across engineering and QA to effectively execute releases across multiple products/platforms.
• Experience working with geo-distributed teams.
• Knowing how to manage direct reports a plus (potentially 1 or 2)
• Willing to adjust schedule for late night deployments.
• Strong communicator - ability to share status of releases to multiple teams and stakeholders through status reports.