Senior Release Management Analyst

Komatsu is an indispensable partner to the construction, mining, forestry, forklift, and industrial machinery markets, maximizing value for customers through innovative solutions. With a diverse line of products supported by our advanced IoT technologies, regional distribution channels, and a global service network, we tap into the power of data and technology to enhance safety and productivity while optimizing performance. Komatsu supports a myriad of markets, including housing, infrastructure, water, pipeline, minerals, automobile, aerospace, electronics and medical, through its many brands and subsidiaries, including TimberPro, Joy, P&H, Montabert, Modular Mining Systems, Hensley Industries, NTC, and Gigaphoton.

Job Overview

We have an excellent opportunity for a Senior Release Management Analyst to join our corporate IT team. This role is working onsite and can be based at our headquarters in Milwaukee, WI or Chicago, IL (near O’Hare). Fully remote work or alternative work locations will not be considered.

In this role you will be responsible for overseeing the planning, coordination, and execution of the software releases. This involves collaborating with the cross functional teams to understand release scope, developing comprehensive release plans, and identifying potential risks. Documentation is a key aspect of their role, with a focus on maintaining accurate and accessible release documentation.

Key Job Responsibilities

Planning:

• Collaborate with Project Managers, IT delivery and operations team and develop a production release calendar to prevent collisions and ensure visibility across relevant teams per application.
• Work with the project and operations support teams and maintain detailed deployment plans for both regular projects/enhancements and production hot fixes.
• Define release criteria that drive release quality metrics and improvements.
• Develop/enhance practices and structures to better scale release management and stabilization processes across suite of applications.
• Identify potential risks with deployment plan and devise mitigation strategies.
• Work closely with Operations team on the management of the maintenance releases and hot fixes and ensure alignment with the application development team.

Execution and Monitoring:

• Ensure appropriate approvals are in place per process defined.
• Work with Change control board and obtain necessary approvals for all production releases.
• Identify and publish interdependencies between applications, infrastructure, support, business needs etc.
• Help team members execute the deployment plan according to the defined schedule.
• Provide release details from the application team to the operations support team and obtain confirmation regarding their support readiness for any release.
• Monitor the deployment process in real-time, help address any issues or roadblocks promptly.

Post Deployment:

• Provide support and assistance to teams and end-users after the deployment.
• Conduct a post-deployment review to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement.

Coordination and Communication:

• Conduct release readiness reviews and provide feedback to enable Go/No-Go decisions by the project and business teams.
• Communicate release details and schedules to stakeholders and leadership.
• Publish deployment status post deployment.

Documentation:

• Maintain detailed documentation of the deployment plan, including step-by-step procedures, configurations, roll back steps and dependencies.
• Document any changes or updates made to the deployment plan during the execution phase.
• Ensure that documentation is accessible and understandable to team members involved in the deployment.
• Maintain running list of unplanned and emergency deployments per application.

Continuous Improvement:

• Conduct a thorough assessment after each deployment to identify lessons learned.
• Implement changes and improvements to the deployment process based on feedback and experiences.
  

Qualifications/Requirements

• Degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field or a combination of education/training and work experience equivalent to an advanced degree.
• Experience in a release management role with a demonstrated track record of delivering releases on time with high quality across technology stack like .Net, Java, Sales Force etc.
• 5+ years’ experience with CI/CD pipelines and related tools such as Azure pipelines or GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD. Ability to create and configure automated build, test, and deployment pipelines.
• 2+ years’ experience with version control systems (e.g., Git), continuous integration/delivery tools (e.g., Jenkins, Travis CI), containerization (e.g., Docker), and infrastructure automation (e.g., Ansible, Terraform).
• 2+ years’ experience with cloud services like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including experience with their deployment and orchestration tools.
• 1+ years’ experience of security best practices in CI/CD pipelines, including experience with security scanning tools (e.g., SonarQube, Snyk).
• Understanding of the code branching and merging strategies when multiple parallel developments for the same application are in progress.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills - ability to effectively exchange ideas and information and effectively relate to others in order to accomplish work responsibilities.
• Schedule flexibility to accommodate production regular and emergency deployments.
• Experience working with global teams.
• Excellent analytical and organizational skills — ability to plan and achieve a variety of tasks. Able to set priorities for client requests and deal with a number of issues concurrently.
• Demonstrates a strong bias towards service, quality, and customer satisfaction; applying information on past experiences and assists others in applying these lessons to solve problems.
• Ability to travel occasionally, including internationally, to interact fully across the global Komatsu organization, with affiliates, dealers, and customers.
  

Additional Information

Komatsu is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.