Job Title: IT RELEASE MANAGER

Department: Global Banking

About Business line/Function: IT Trade

Position Purpose: 

Responsibilities

Direct Responsibilities

 1. Release Planning & Coordination

* Release Roadmap: Define the release schedule, milestones, and deadlines in alignment with business goals.

*   Stakeholder Management: Coordinate between Developers, QA, Product Owners, and Infrastructure teams to ensure all dependencies are identified.

*   Change Management: Manage the Change Advisory Board (CAB) process, ensuring all releases are documented, approved, and risk assessed.

 2. CI/CD Pipeline Oversight

* Automation Strategy: Collaborate with DevOps engineers to optimize Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

*   Deployment Orchestration: Oversee the movement of code through various environments (Dev --> Test --> UAT --> Staging --> Production).

*   Tooling Management: Manage and optimize tools such as Jenkins, Bitbucket CI etc.

3. Risk Management & Quality Gatekeeping

*   Go/No-Go Decisions: Lead the final review before production deployment to ensure all testing (Unit, Integration, Regression, UAT) is complete.

*   Rollback Planning: Ensure every release has a verified "back-out" plan to restore service immediately if a failure occurs.

*   Compliance: Ensure releases meet security standards, regulatory requirements, and internal audit trails.

 4. Monitoring & Post-Release

*   Post-Implementation Review (PIR): Lead "blameless post-mortems" after failed releases to identify root causes and prevent recurrence.

*   Stability Monitoring:  Track KPIs such as Deployment Frequency, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).

Contributing Responsibilities

1. Process Improvement & Governance 

SDLC Optimization: Collaborate with Engineering leads to refine the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), reducing bottlenecks between "Code Complete" and "Production Ready."

Standardization: Help define and maintain standardized release templates, checklists, and documentation formats to ensure consistency across different product teams.

Audit Support: Provide evidence and documentation for internal and external auditors to prove that change management policies were followed.

2. Resource & Environment Coordination

Environment Availability: Work with Infrastructure/Cloud teams to ensure that UAT and Staging environments are synchronized with Production and available for testing windows.

Capacity Planning: Assist in forecasting the impact of upcoming releases on system performance and infrastructure capacity.

Conflict Resolution: Act as a mediator when multiple teams compete for the same deployment window or environment resources.

3. Knowledge Management

Documentation: Contribute to the internal Wiki or Knowledge Base by documenting known deployment pitfalls and "best practice" guides.

Communication Bridge: Translate technical release risks into business impact summaries for non-technical senior management.

4. Tooling Evolution 

Requirement Gathering: Act as the "internal customer" for the DevOps team when requesting new features or plugins for the CI/CD pipeline.

Beta Testing: Participate in the testing of new deployment tools or orchestration software before they are rolled out to the wider engineering organization.

Technical & Behavioral Competencies

• Release Orchestration (Expert): Proven ability to design and manage complex deployment pipelines across multi-tier environments while ensuring zero or minimal downtime.
• Automation Mindset (Advanced): Skilled at replacing manual checklists with automated quality gates; proficient in using Python or Bash to integrate disparate tools (e.g., Jira to Jenkins).
• ITSM & Governance (Advanced): Mastery of Change Management workflows and Change Advisory Board (CAB) processes, with a track record of maintaining rigorous audit trails in ServiceNow or Jira.
• Infrastructure Literacy (Intermediate): Comfortable navigating Linux environments via CLI to troubleshoot deployment failures, analyze logs, and verify overall service health.
• Cloud & Container Strategy (Intermediate): Strong understanding of how Docker and Kubernetes enable modern deployment patterns, such as Blue-Green, Canary, or Rolling updates.
• Configuration Management (Intermediate): Proficient in applying Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles to ensure Dev, UAT, and Production environments remain mirrored and consistent.
  
  
• Crisis Management & Composure: Ability to remain calm and decisive during high-stakes production incidents; focuses on executing rollback plans and coordinating recovery over assigning blame.
• Strategic Negotiation: Acts as a bridge between Development (speed) and Operations (stability); capable of denying release based on quality data while providing a clear roadmap to approval.
• Meticulous Risk Assessment: Employs a "trust but verify" approach to deployment readiness, scrutinizing test validity and identifying hidden dependencies to prevent regressions.
• Stakeholder Influence & Communication: Expertly translates complex technical risks into business impact summaries for non-technical executives to ensure organizational alignment.
• Continuous Improvement (Kaizen): Maintains a relentless drive to optimize the release lifecycle, analyzing trends to reduce MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery) and increase deployment frequency.

Specific Qualifications:

• Version Control: Proficiency in Git and experience with platforms such as GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Hands-on experience with Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI, CircleCI, or Bamboo.
• Containerization: Strong knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes (K8s), and Helm charts.
• Cloud Computing: Practical experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Experience using Ansible or CloudFormation to manage environment consistency.
• Project & Change Management: Proficiency in Jira, Confluence, and ServiceNow.
• Systems Administration: Strong Linux administration skills (RHEL, Ubuntu, CentOS, or Debian), including CLI proficiency, shell navigation, and system monitoring.
• Automation Scripting: Advanced ability in Bash, Python, or PowerShell for automating deployment tasks and integrating tool APIs.

Experience Level: Min 7 years

Skills Referential (Required knowledge, skills and abilities)

Technical Skills:

• Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab
• CI/CD Tools Jenkins
• Docker, Kubernetes (K8s), Helm
• Ansible, CloudFormation
  
  

Behavioral Skills: 

• Communication 
• Conflict Resolution
• Attention to Detail
• Leadership

Education Level: B-Tech or equivalent

Location: Chennai, India

About BNP Paribas Group:

BNP Paribas is the European Union’s leading bank and key player in international banking. It operates in 65 countries and has nearly 185,000 employees, including more than 145,000 in Europe. The Group has key positions in its three main fields of activity: Commercial, Personal Banking & Services for the Group’s commercial & personal banking and several specialized businesses including BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Arval; Investment & Protection Services for savings, investment, and protection solutions; and Corporate & Institutional Banking, focused on corporate and institutional clients. Based on its strong diversified and integrated model, the Group helps all its clients (individuals, community associations, entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporates and institutional clients) to realize their projects through solutions spanning financing, investment, savings and protection insurance. In Europe, BNP Paribas has four domestic markets: Belgium, France, Italy, and Luxembourg. The Group is rolling out its integrated commercial & personal banking model across several Mediterranean countries, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. As a key player in international banking, the Group has leading platforms and business lines in Europe, a strong presence in the Americas as well as a solid and fast-growing business in Asia-Pacific. BNP Paribas has implemented a Corporate Social Responsibility approach in all its activities, enabling it to contribute to the construction of a sustainable future, while ensuring the Group's performance and stability.

About BNP Paribas India Solutions:

Established in 2005, BNP Paribas India Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP Paribas SA, European Union’s leading bank with an international reach. With delivery centers located in Bengaluru, Chennai and Mumbai, we are a 24x7 global delivery center. India Solutions services three business lines: Corporate and Institutional Banking, Investment Solutions and Retail Banking for BNP Paribas across the Group. Driving innovation and growth, we are harnessing the potential of over 10000 employees, to provide support and develop best-in-class solutions.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At BNP Paribas, we passionately embrace diversity and are committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where all employees are valued, respected and can bring their authentic selves to work. We prohibit Discrimination and Harassment of any kind and our policies promote equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants, irrespective of, but not limited to their gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, colour, national origin, age, religion, social status, mental or physical disabilities, veteran status etc. As a global Bank, we truly believe that inclusion and diversity of our teams is key to our success in serving our clients and the communities we operate in. As a global Bank, we truly believe that inclusion and diversity of our teams is key to our success in serving our clients and the communities we operate in.