Release Manager

Al Etihad Payments empowers employees to work in an environment that best promotes their productivity and well-being, while providing high-quality workplace and fantastic professional experience.

Al Etihad Payments is the UAE’s designated retail payments entity, dedicated to developing and operating world-class infrastructure, standards, and solutions for the UAE Economy. Al Etihad Payments is a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE, strongly supported by the UAE Government.

Al Etihad Payments is the UAE’s designated retail payments entity, dedicated to developing and operating world-class infrastructure, standards, and solutions for the UAE Economy. Al Etihad Payments is a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE, strongly supported by the UAE Government.

Our employees are committed to work with licensed financial institutions and other payment service providers to foster innovation and deliver excellent financial services to all in the UAE, efficiently and without friction.

Al Etihad Payments supports the government’s objectives of a cashless society, national digitization, and the Central Bank of the UAE objective of being a top ten central bank globally.

We are a collaborative, diverse and passionate group of individuals that works as one team. We support one another, make impactful contributions to the organization, and develop and nurture meaningful connections across the payment’s ecosystem!

The Release Manager is responsible for leading the strategic planning, scheduling, risk assessment, and end-to-end orchestration of all software releases, infrastructure patches, and configuration updates across enterprise environments. This role acts as the primary gatekeeper for production stability, ensuring that Standard, Normal, and Major Change Requests (CRs) are meticulously tracked, reviewed, and executed in compliance with ITIL standards. Utilizing Jira Service Management (ITSM) as the core single source of truth, this senior professional will bridge the gap between engineering teams and operations to drive zero-downtime deployments and safeguard platform integrity.

• Change Lifecycle Management:
  Own the end-to-end tracking, lifecycle management, and auditing of all Standard, Normal, and Major Change Requests to ensure maximum delivery reliability.
• Standard CR Automation:
  Define, document, and pre-approve repeatable, low-risk Standard CRs within Jira to streamline rapid operational maintenance.
• Normal CR Evaluation:
  Review, coordinate, and seek appropriate technical approvals for Normal CRs, ensuring complete documentation, validation, and rollback strategies are fully established.
• Major CR Orchestration:
  Convene and lead emergency Change Advisory Boards (CAB) for high-impact Major CRs, closely assessing downstream risks, cross-team dependencies, and resource availability before signing off on deployment schedules.

• ITSM Workflows:
  Supervise and optimize release-tracking workflows, custom transition schemas, and automation rules inside the Jira ITSM tool.
• Configuration Management:
  Manage software and infrastructure configuration changes, ensuring all production attributes, environment variables, and application parameters are locked down and tracked historically within the ticketing system.
• Audit Compliance:
  Maintain a crystal-clear, audit-ready paper trail of all production modifications, configuration drift remediations, and operational change approvals.

• Vulnerability & Patch Coordination:
  Partner with Security and Sys Admin squads to orchestrate routine and emergency Patch Management…