Lead of Release Management

About the Job

If you thrive in environments where release governance, technical depth, and cross-organisational leadership come together, this role could be a strong next step in your career.

As Senior Release Manager within Allianz Technology's Sales Digital Workstation (SDW) programme, you will own and continuously improve end-to-end release management at scale, creating transparency across a tribe of more than 200 FTEs and harmonising release processes with Operating Entities (OEs).

You will strengthen automation and technical controls, lead a Barcelona-based team of developers, and connect strategy with execution so that release readiness is visible, fact-based and actionable.

The ideal colleague is a technically credible, outcome-focused and collaborative leader who is equally comfortable reviewing a deployment pipeline, facilitating a go/no-go decision, coaching developers and aligning senior OE stakeholders.

What You Do

• • Own the integrated SDW release calendar, release policy, governance model and end-to-end release lifecycle across products, platforms and OEs.
  • Coordinate release scope, dependencies, risks, readiness, go/no-go decisions, deployment windows, hypercare and post-release reviews across a tribe of more than 200 FTEs.
  • Lead the transformation towards a harmonised, scalable release model, aligning local and global processes around agreed minimum standards, controls and RACI models.
  • Work hands-on with engineering teams to strengthen CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, environment promotion and release orchestration.
  • Embed automated quality, security, vulnerability, regression and compliance checks into release pipelines and quality gates.
  • Partner with SRE and operations colleagues on observability, release health, incident learning, business continuity and reliable hypercare.
  • Provide purpose, priorities and delivery accountability for a Barcelona-based team of developers, coaching them and enabling effective collaboration with Germany and other global delivery locations.
  • Define and track release performance indicators, using evidence to improve predictability, quality, lead time and operational stability.

What You Bring

• Significant experience as a Release Manager, Senior Release Manager, DevOps Lead or comparable technical delivery leader in a large-scale enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating releases across a tribe or delivery organisation of more than 200 FTEs.
• Proven success harmonising processes across business units, countries, OEs or other federated organisational structures.
• Experience leading or functionally managing software developers, ideally in a distributed international setup.
• Strong stakeholder management and facilitation skills, including the confidence to lead go/no-go decisions and senior escalations.
• Ability to translate complex technical and delivery topics into clear decisions, ownership and next steps.
• Fluent business English; additional European language skills are an advantage.

What we offer

• We offer a hybrid work model which recognizes the value of striking a balance between in-person collaboration and remote working incl. up to 25 days per year working from abroad.
• We believe in rewarding performance and our compensation and benefits package includes a company bonus scheme, pension, employee shares program and multiple employee discounts (details vary by location).
• From career development and digital learning programs to international career mobility, we offer lifelong learning for our employees worldwide and an environment where innovation, delivery and empowerment are fostered.
• Flexible working, health and wellbeing offers (including healthcare and parental leave benefits) support to balance family and career and help our people return from career breaks with experience that nothing else can teach.