Production Management Support

About the role

This role is for an Enterprise Release Manager within the Ford Credit Command Center. The Command Center mission is to help maintain a stable production environment through effective change, incident, and problem management.

Responsibilities

• Minimize Friction & Automate Data Collection: Meet developers where they work. Integrate ERM tooling (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira Align, ADO) directly with CI/CD pipelines and backlog tools. Use "Release Tags" in Jira/ADO to flag dependencies and automate status updates (e.g., auto-updating release plans when pull requests merge or QA deployments succeed).
• Define & Enforce Quality Gates: Establish and monitor a lightweight but firm governance framework. Define and enforce a "Definition of Ready for Release" (DoR) at key milestones (e.g., T-Minus 10 days for cross-team dependency sign-offs, T-Minus 5 days for regression testing/vulnerability checks, T-Minus 2 days for verified rollback plans). Ensure gates are objective and binary (Pass/Fail) using automated checks (e.g., SonarQube, automated test pass rates).
• Establish a "Release Train" Cadence: Publish and maintain a 12-Month Release Calendar locking in major release dates, code freeze windows, and maintenance windows. Run short, highly focused "Scrum of Scrums" or Release Readiness Syncs (15–20 minutes) to resolve cross-team dependencies and environment conflicts. Enforce a "Train Leaves on Time" policy where lagging features that miss critical gates are decoupled and pushed to the next release.
• Provide Immediate Value to Teams: Coordinate staging and test environments to act as a "traffic cop" and resolve contention. Automate the generation of release documentation, CAB (Change Advisory Board) approvals, and audit logging to shield developers from corporate bureaucracy. Work to eliminate deployment weekend chaos, turning long troubleshooting sessions into quiet, non-event deployments.
• Measure & Gamify with DORA Metrics: Track and publish key performance indicators, including Change Failure Rate (CFR), Deployment Lead Time, and Environment Downtime. Create and share a highly visible "Release Health" Dashboard to highlight team achievements and identify areas needing coaching.
• Facilitate Blameless Post-Mortems: Following any release-related production incidents, facilitate collaborative, blameless post-mortems with involved teams to map out what happened, identify process gaps, and update the ERM playbook to prevent future occurrences.
• Incident Bridge & Change Management Support: Participate in critical situation bridges, track incident timelines, and participate in Production Management Post-Launch Incident Meetings. Manage the ERM Change Freeze Calendar and ensure all Change Requests are aligned with ERM schedules and approved prior to production launches.

Requirements

• High School Diploma
• 5+ years of experience in Release Management, Change Management, or Incident Management within an enterprise IT environment.
• Experience working within a Fintech (Financial Technology) organization or the financial services sector is a strong plus.
• Experience using an ITSM platform (e.g., ServiceNow) for change enablement, incident tracking, and problem management.
• Experience using project management and backlog tools (e.g., Jira, Jira Align, Azure DevOps/ADO) to track release dependencies and build automated dashboards.
• Familiarity with DevOps metrics (DORA), automated testing tools, and code quality analysis gates (e.g., SonarQube).
• Familiarity with ITIL principles or ITIL certification.
• Knowledge of Ford Credit business operations (Business Centers or Central Office).
• Understanding of monitoring tools and processes (ideally Dynatrace and Splunk).
• Familiarity with SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) principles and practices.
• Knowledge of various operating systems, databases, network protocols, and batch processing cycles (EOD/EOM) is an asset.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity tools, processes, and controls.

Qualifications

• Project management background.
• SRE or observability background, or at minimum awareness of SRE principles.
• Reporting background.
• Fintech experience, with automotive fintech being ideal.

Skills

• Project management background.
• SRE or observability background, or at minimum awareness of SRE principles.
• Reporting background.
• Fintech experience, with automotive fintech being ideal.

Benefits

Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
Tuition assistance
Established and active employee resource groups
Paid time off for individual and team community service
A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

Pay

This position is a salary grade 5 and ranges from $65,100-$109,300.
This position is a salary grade 6 and ranges from $74,300-$124,500.
This position is a salary grade 7 and ranges from $86,600-$144,900.
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

Schedule

This position is hybrid. Candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location may be required to be onsite four or more days per week.