Release Lead

Quality Professionals (Q-Pros) is a leading software quality assurance and testing company, with a strong presence across the Middle East and GCC. We are looking for a Release Lead to join our one of our clients in UAE.
Role Overview
The Release Lead will be responsible for managing and governing the end-to-end release lifecycle for Common Digital Platform (CDP) applications. The role will establish standardized release processes, coordinate releases across multiple CDP projects, drive CI/CD/CT, and ensure applications are released safely, efficiently, and with minimal business disruption.
Key Responsibilities
Define and maintain the Release Policy, Master Release Plan, and End-to-End Release Gate process for all CDP applications.
Own and maintain the Master Release Calendar, coordinating release schedules across projects and ensuring there are no release conflicts.
Work closely with the Change Management team to ensure all CDP applications complete the required release governance and readiness checks before CAB approval.
Drive CI/CD and DevOps adoption, including automated application deployments across development, testing, staging, and production environments.
Establish and improve automated release practices using DevOps, BDD, containerized deployment approaches, and relevant CI/CD tools.
Work closely with Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, and Change teams to ensure seamless and repeatable release execution.
Define release readiness criteria, entry/exit gates, deployment checklists, rollback plans, and post-release validation processes.
Manage release dependencies across applications, platforms, integrations, and SaaS solutions.
Use tools such as JIRA to track release activities, dependencies, risks, issues, and readiness.
Set up and leverage application monitoring and release monitoring tools to support deployment validation and early detection of issues.
Establish release dashboards and KPIs, including release success rate, deployment frequency, failed releases, rollback rate, release lead time, and release-related incidents.
Provide regular release status, performance, and success reporting to CDP leadership and relevant stakeholders.
Continuously identify opportunities to improve release automation, standardization, quality, and time-to-market.
Experience & Skills
Proven experience as a Release Lead / Release Manager in large-scale enterprise technology environments.
Strong understanding of application and SaaS development and release lifecycles.
Hands-on understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, automated deployments, containerization, and BDD.
Experience with JIRA and release/change management processes.
Experience working with monitoring, deployment, and DevOps toolsets.
Strong understanding of enterprise change governance, CAB processes, release controls, and production deployment practices.
Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to coordinate multiple technology teams and concurrent projects.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on automation, operational efficiency, and continuous improvement.
Experience managing releases across multiple applications, environments, integrations, and technology teams.

Work arrangement
Yes