Senior Technical Program Release Manager

We are looking for a determined leader to join our Technical Program and Release Management role for the OpenBMC Core Software. You will work with engineering and product leaders on the planning and execution of programs to develop and deliver firmware enabling next-generation enterprise systems at the heart of AI infrastructure. Our work directly impacts data center management, reliability, and security across leading cloud service providers, OEMs, and hyperscale deployments. We need passionate, hard-working, and creative people to help us reach our engineering goals. This role is embedded within the Core team and is responsible for driving release readiness, engineering quality, and operational excellence across the firmware stack. You will own release signal health – tracking dependencies, regressions, and backlog status – while championing quality metrics and SLA. You will lead DevOps initiatives including branching strategy, release management, and dashboard operations, while also driving AI tool enablement across teams. You will partner closely with engineering, QA, Platform and product management to ensure consistent, predictable, and high-quality delivery. What you’ll be doing: • Define, track, and drive engineering quality SLAs including unit test coverage targets, code review compliance, and PLC (Product Lifecycle) alignment across firmware releases. • Own and communicate release signal health including tracking schedule, cross-team dependencies, identifying regressions early, and maintaining backlog status to provide leadership with accurate, real-time release readiness assessments • Coordinate release activities across multiple firmware and platform teams, aligning incremental work with release achievements to ensure consistency and predictability. • Assess release-readiness status, anticipate risk, and develop mitigation strategies; raise critical blockers and drive resolution across collaborator teams. • Drive Engineering and QA teams on test plans, execution, reviews, failure analysis, and assessment of overall quality and release risk. • Build and maintain quality dashboards surfacing CI/CD pipeline health, coverage trends, review cycle times, defect escape rates, and SLA consistency to enable data-driven engineering decisions. • Identify quality failures, lead retrospective analysis, and drive improvement action plans in partnership with engineering management • Lead and improve software branching strategies including feature, release, and hotfix branches to ensure smooth integration, version control, and timely delivery across repositories • Champion AI tool adoption and enablement throughout Core and Platform teams, finding ways where AI-assisted development, code review, testing, and documentation tools can accelerate engineering velocity What we need to see: • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Computer Science, or similar field or equivalent experience • 10+ years of hands-on experience with software/firmware program or release management in tech or related fields • Thorough knowledge of software engineering and product lifecycle principles including branching strategies, CI/CD pipelines, and quality gating processes • Demonstrated ability to define and drive quality metrics and SLAs; experience with test coverage, code review processes, and defect tracking • Strong analytical skills with experience building dashboards and using data to drive engineering decisions • Excellent communication and technical presentation skills; ability to synthesize complex status and surface key issues to senior leadership • Enthusiastic and passionate about process improvement with a track record of implementing systematic solutions in dynamic environments Ways to stand out from the crowd: • Experience with BMC firmware, server management stacks, or datacenter infrastructure software in the enterprise or cloud space • Hands-on experience evaluating or deploying AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, AI code review, AI test generation) at an engineering team level • Familiarity with PLC (Product Lifecycle) processes and multi-functional alignment between hardware and software organizations • Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Bash) or tooling to automate program management workflows and dashboards • Experience with OSS compliance, vulnerability resolution, or security-focused release validation processes