Senior Release Manager

Job Description

Agility’s commercially deployed humanoids operate alongside teams in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers—tackling physically demanding and repetitive tasks while enabling workers to focus on higher-value work. With industry-leading safety standards and years of proven deployment data, we’re pioneering a new era of automation that enhances human potential.

About the Role

As a Senior Release Manager at Agility Robotics, you’ll own the end-to-end release process for our robot platform, ensuring seamless coordination across software, firmware, hardware, and field operations teams. You will triage the issues that decide whether a release ships, build the automation that makes releases repeatable, and instrument the release path so every release is measurable, observable, and reversible.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of technical execution and cross-functional leadership. You’ll help establish release management as a capability that enables Agility Robotics to ship confidently and frequently while maintaining operational excellence in deployed customer environments.

About the Work

Release Planning & Execution

• Define release scope, objectives, and timelines in collaboration with Product, Engineering, and Field Operations teams
• Plan and run the release calendar for robot software, firmware, and cloud services, including major, minor, patch, and hotfix releases
• Manage release cadence to balance rapid innovation with stability requirements for production deployments
• Define entry and exit criteria, run release readiness reviews, and lead go/no-go decisions based on test and quality results from QA and V&V teams
• Run blameless post-release reviews and drive root-cause follow-up

Release Process & Configuration Management

• Establish and enforce standardized release processes including change control, version management, and release branching
• Maintain configuration integrity across robot platforms and hardware variants
• Define and maintain release policies, documentation standards, and traceability requirements so every release can be tied to what changed and who approved it
• Partnership with the Issue Management team to ensure we have a release vehicle for upcoming issues that affect the fleet.

System Integration & Validation

• Partner with Systems Engineering and Test teams to develop comprehensive validation strategies for each release
• Ensure thorough integration testing across hardware-software-AI subsystems to validate functionality, performance, safety, and reliability
• Coordinate field readiness assessments including deployment scenario validation and customer acceptance criteria
• Drive cross-functional collaboration to resolve defects, integration issues, and regression failures

Release Improvements

• Introduce release train models and standardized pipelines so releases are predictable and low-touch
• Continuously remove manual steps, and measure the time and errors they cost and provide feedback to the Release Engineering team on how to make builds and releases more efficient.

Field Deployment & Operations Support

• Plan staged OTA rollouts: internal fleet, canary sites, rollout rings, then general availability
• Establish rollback criteria, automated rollback hooks, and contingency plans for production environments
• Coordinate customer-site schedules and acceptance criteria to minimize operational disruption
• Maintain incident playbooks and support incident response and post-deployment issue resolution

Release Instrumentation & Metrics

• Establish and track key release metrics (cycle time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, defect escape rate, rollback frequency, update success rate, time to restore)
• Instrument CI/CD, signing, artifact, and OTA pipelines so every stage is timed and traceable
• Tag releases in telemetry, logging, and tracing systems so faults, crashes, and regressions map to a specific build
• Build and maintain dashboards and alerts for engineering, product, operations, and support

About You

Experience

• 5+ years of release management experience for complex integrated systems involving hardware, firmware, and software
• Proven track record managing releases in robotics, autonomous systems, automotive, aerospace, or similar hardware-software domains
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams through complex product development and deployment cycles
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in fast-paced, high-growth environments with evolving requirements

Technical Skills

• Hands-on experience building release automation, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment orchestration (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Buildkite)
• Strong understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), configuration management, and version control best practices
• Experience with version control (Git) and issue tracking (Jira, GitHub), including severity-based triage and release criteria
• Experience instrumenting delivery and fleet health with observability tools (e.g., Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Foxglove, Datadog, Sentry)
• Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Bash/Shell) for automation and data analysis

Domain Knowledge

• OTA and fleet deployment: Experience with OTA updates, versioning, canary and ring-based rollouts, rollback design, and fleet state tracking
• Understanding of release dependencies across software, firmware, and hardware variants
• Familiarity with release health metrics and defining SLIs/SLOs for deployed devices

Mindset & Traits

• Ownership mentality - takes initiative, drives closure, and delivers results
• Strong technical communication skills - able to translate between engineering teams and business stakeholders
• Proven ability to influence without authority and drive alignment across diverse teams
• Data-driven decision-making approach with strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities
• Resourceful and comfortable with ambiguity- brings clarity through structure and action

Bonus Points

• Experience in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or advanced manufacturing automation
• Familiarity with ROS 2 and its build and packaging tooling
• Experience implementing release train models in hardware-software systems
• Experience with automated release note generation and artifact management
• Experience with artifact signing and secure update chains
• Experience with containerization (Docker)
• Experience triaging fleet issues and driving root-cause analysis with software teams

Why Join Agility Robotics?

• Define release management practices for a real-world robotics platform
• Direct impact on customer success through reliable, high-quality product releases
• Work at the cutting edge of robotics in a fast-moving, highly collaborative environment where your contributions will have immediate impact
• Shape operational excellence: Help build release automation and deployment processes from the ground up
• Professional growth: Work with world-class robotics and engineering talent

Location

• This is a fully remote role with the option to work hybrid if a commutable distance from our Salem, OR, Pittsburgh, PA, or Fremont, CA offices.

The final salary offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on several factors that may include but are not limited to: market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This range may change based on geographical location and may be modified in the future.

Anticipated Base Salary Range

$128,000—$199,000 USD

In addition to base pay, our competitive total rewards package consists of the following for full-time employees:

• 401(k) Plan: Includes a 6% company match.
• Equity: Company stock options.
• Insurance Coverage: 100% company-paid medical, dental, vision, and short/long-term disability insurance for employees.
• Benefit Start Date: Eligible for benefits on your first day of employment.
• Well-Being Support: Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Time Off:
  • Exempt Employees: Flexible, unlimited PTO and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown.
  • Non-Exempt Employees: 10 vacation days, paid sick leave, and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown, annually.
• On-Site Perks: Catered lunches four times a week and a variety of healthy snacks and refreshments at our Salem and Pittsburgh locations.
• Parental Leave: Generous paid parental leave programs.
• Work Environment: A culture that supports flexible work arrangements.
• Growth Opportunities: Professional development and tuition reimbursement programs.
• Relocation Assistance: Provided for eligible roles.
• Annual Discretionary Bonus: Provided for eligible roles.

All of our roles are U.S.-based. Applicants must have current authorization to work in the United States.

Agility Robotics is committed to a work environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. Each individual has the right to work in a professional atmosphere that promotes equal employment opportunities and prohibits unlawful discriminatory practices, including harassment. Therefore, it is the policy of Agility Robotics to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Agility Robotics prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.

Agility Robotics does not accept unsolicited referrals from third-party recruiting agencies.  We prioritize direct applicants and encourage all qualified candidates to apply directly through our careers page.  If you are represented by a third party, your application may not be considered.  To ensure full consideration, please apply directly.