Senior Manager, Software Product & Release Operations

Who we are Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone.

At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on Linked In.Aurora's Product Operations team is at the fore-front of technology, providing partnership to product, operations & engineering and ensuring commercial operations capabilities are delivered on time, safely and efficiently.

Within Product Operations, our Software Product & Release Operations function owns the release cadence and readiness of everything Aurora ships in software — closing the gap between engineering roadmaps and operational readiness, not just reporting on it.

We're searching for an innovative, solutions-oriented leader to own the software release cycle end-to-end, from build readiness through rollout, as Aurora ramps production toward 20 AVs deployed per week following our first AAET launch. This role partners closely with Aurora Driver and Service Engineering , Launch Operations, and Product Ops & Platform Enablement. You'll be both the accountable owner of software Go/No-Go decisions and the primary translator of engineering roadmaps into an operational readiness plan the rest of Product Operations can plan against.

To be successful in this role, you need to pair technical fluency in software release management with a data-driven outlook, exceptional communication skills with strong executive presence, the ability to bring ambiguity into focus in a fast-paced environment, and the ability to influence stakeholders without direct authority.

You will report directly to the Senior Director, Product Operations, and be based in San Francisco, Pittsburgh or Dallas, with willingness to travel to test sites and partner facilities as  this role you will:

Own Enterprise-Wide Customer and Operations Release Strategy:
Own and evolve the overarching operations release strategy across software, autonomous systems, and fleet operations, ensuring our release and rollout framework scales seamlessly with business and fleet growth.

Define Release Operational readiness & risk Governance:
Define and institute company-wide release readiness and risk gating standards, serving as the accountable authority for the evaluation framework leadership relies on to clear commercial deployments.

Drive Cross-Functional Capability Roadmap Alignment:
Partner directly with VP and Director-level leaders across Engineering, Product, and Commercial Operations to align multi-year capability roadmaps with commercial and business GTM expansion targets.

Unify Multi-System Releases:
Unify release governance across complex, interdependent software, hardware, and platform changes—resolving top-level trade-offs and cross-departmental dependencies when release timelines conflict with operational readiness

Establish Customer & Operations Release & Health Metrics:
Define, own, and report on enterprise release predictability, defect escape metrics, and roadmap-to-readiness lead times for executive leadership.

Manage Feature & Defect Escalation Frameworks:
Standardize backlog hygiene and defect escalation pathways across the software and operational release pipelines, ensuring systemic feedback loops exist between field performance and engineering.

Own the Software Release and change Management Cycle:
Own and evolve the overall release strategy across autonomous operations. Spanning across the entire software release cycle, from build…