Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
Generic

Abhinav Reddy Chirra

Staff Software Engineering Release Manager ( Web, Mobile Apps, Infrastructure, Salesforce, Hardware)
Los Angeles,CA

Summary

Detail-oriented Release Manager focused on providing defect and bug-free products to customers by working closely with Development, Product, QA and Business teams.


  • 9+ years of experience in Software industry with strong technical exposure and competence in Software Configuration, Build and Release Management .
  • Shipping high-quality, feature-packed updates to over 347M+ users on a weekly basis
  • Strong knowledge of professional software testing, CI/CD tools implementation for build and release processes
  • Hands on experience in deploying software releases for Firmware AR ( Snapchat spectacles) products
  • Effective at building and deepening productive relationships with all product stakeholders
  • Skilled at guiding operations, supporting deployments and implementing quality control standards.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD concepts and tools (such as Jenkins, GITLAB)
  • Provide contextual judgment by leveraging data to drive critical release Go/No-Go decisions
  • Expertise in creating product deployment and operational run books to support complex releases across Mobile , Web, salesforce and Firmware applications
  • Hands on experience in defining and improving release processes to deliver regular high quality product releases

Overview

9
9
years of professional experience
6
6
years of post-secondary education

Work History

Staff Software Engineering Release Manager

Dexcom
01.2023 - Current
  • Managed simultaneous and multiple releases across various platforms and within diverse portfolios.
  • Managed all aspects of internal and production release process for Dexcom iOS and Android apps
  • Successfully transitioned the company from Ad-hoc releases to a structured monthly release cycle, enhancing predictability and efficiency in software deployment
  • Managed the continuous build & release system
  • Support Operations team in production deployments across the globe
  • Scaled to multiple daily internal releases and weekly external releases
  • Responsible for implementing and managing release processes for code through development, Master, Stage, UAT and Production environments
  • Manage cross-functional relationships and ensure there is healthy communication among Engineering, QA,Design, and Release teams
  • Conduct reviews and ensure alignment on Go/No-Go decision
  • Develop and maintain release schedules and ensure that all stakeholders are aligned with the timeline. Coordinate with development teams to ensure that code changes are thoroughly tested before release
  • Coordinate and communicate with all stakeholders, including development teams, product owners, QA teams, and operations teams, to ensure that everyone is aware of the release schedule and status
  • Manage the deployment of software releases into production environments. Work with the operations teams to ensure that the infrastructure is ready for release and coordinate with the development teams to ensure that the release process is smooth and efficient
  • Overseeing the DevOps CI/CD Improvements and operations.
  • Identify areas for improvement in the release process and work with teams to implement changes that will increase efficiency and quality.
  • Mentor and lead a team of DevOps engineers, providing guidance and support as needed
  • Work with stakeholders to evaluate current processes and improve on them. Document and standardize the release process for future reference
  • Ensure that the release process adheres to quality standards and best practices.
  • Develop and manage metrics that measure the effectiveness of the release process.
  • Maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders across the organization, including executives, product owners, and development teams

Senior Mobile Release Manager

Snapchat ( Snap Inc )
02.2019 - 01.2023
  • Managed all aspects of internal and production release process for Snapchat iOS and Android apps
  • Enabled rapid release cycles by defining and improving ( Monthly -> Bi-weekly -> Weekly) the existing release and deployment process
  • Managed the continuous build & release system
  • Scaled to multiple daily internal releases and weekly external releases
  • Provided operational support for emergent production issues
  • Worked cross functionally with all areas of the business to ensure functional readiness and privacy/security compliance for all features in each release
  • First Release Manager for snapchat to support the Software releases on firmware devices.
  • Collaborated with team of 100+ in the development and Release of Snapchat spotlight product
  • Provided release operational support for Snapchat chat re-write project that saved company millions of dollars.
  • Achieved Highest DAU on android application through effectively helping with resolving crashes and shipping the App faster than before.
  • Defined and implemented the release process for Xiaomi appstore and Huawei appstore that contributed 10% growth in Android DAU
  • Defining release schedules and processes, including how to escalate critical issues to "hotfix" releases
  • Analyzing usage metrics for mobile applications, identifying patterns and opportunities for improvement
  • Changed and implemented CI/CD, branching strategy which resulted in the faster firmware releases for Snapchat AR products
  • Manage cross-functional relationships and ensure there is healthy communication among Engineering, QA,Design, and Release teams
  • Drive sprint planning and sprint / release retrospectives and ensure continuous improvement
  • Manage release status updates and provide clarity to all stakeholders, including the team, on progress towards the agreed milestones
  • Reporting status updates and metrics to senior leadership on performance of releases
  • Responsible for implementing and managing release processes for code through development, Master, Alpha, Beta and Production environments
  • Monitor software development team(s) release readiness, per defined content, and escalate release risks of late and/or low-quality releases
  • Partnered with quality assurance team to ensure quality release cycles
  • Manage relationships and coordinate work between different teams at different locations
  • Conduct reviews and ensure alignment on Go/No-Go decision
  • Continually work towards making improvements in the release process
  • Analyzing usage metrics for mobile applications, identifying patterns and opportunities for improvement
  • Experience working with globally distributed teams
  • Measure and monitor release progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time and within budget, and that they meet or exceed expectations
  • Provide reporting on weekly, monthly, YOY release health
  • Write operational run-books and documentation to support the Release team as needed
  • Monitor and provide regular status reports to leadership and the organization

IT Devops Lead

Cydcor
07.2018 - 02.2019
  • Own and manage overall release plans and Activities throughout the product teams and organization
  • Monitor the deployment team for a successful production deployment
  • Supported ,implemented and Released salesforce campaigns for major clients which includes AT&T, T-Mobile and Amazon
  • Provide Implementation status updates to all partners including the VP of Engineering and infrastructure
  • Provide weekly release reports to the higher management
  • Defined and Implemented CM and Release Management Processes, Policies and Procedures
  • Creating, maintaining, and streamlining automated build and release pipeline from code compilation, automated testing, to deploying releases to stage, stress,UAT to production
  • Managing the source control builds and deployment
  • Implemented the branching strategy and resolving code conflicts
  • Documenting the pre-deployment, deployment, post-deployment, and rollback protocols in a Confluence page for auditing purposes
  • Creating and maintaining documentation of the build and release and change management process in confluence
  • Working with developers and cross functional teams to fix the build issues
  • Created new deployment process for low impact development changes
  • Responsible for infrastructure changes (database, system and configuration) changes to have the effective build to the lower environment
  • Documenting each and every part of the process in confluence (Atlassian tool)
  • Responsible for creating new branches/Patch branches based on the request from DEV team
  • Supported and implemented Salesforce related deployments
  • Provided the 24/7 on call support for all the applications
  • Managed offshore and onshore resources as needed for production releases
  • Configured Jenkins as a common build engine to build and deploy applications to DEV, QA, and UAT and PROD environments
  • Maintained various DevOps related tools and scripts on various environments (dev, test, pre-prod, production) on on-premises
  • Supported Salesforce Data refresh schedules
  • Supported QA on a daily basis for the build and deployment

Lead Release manager

ACT
06.2017 - 07.2018
  • Own and manage overall release plans and Activities throughout the product teams and organization
  • Implemented Auto scaling groups to our website deployment
  • Driving the product teams to devops model
  • Experienced in driving the organization on AWS deployments
  • Participate in CAB meeting to discuss the release scope and /or roadblocks
  • Defined new release process for the devops and legacy deployments
  • Created ECR (emergency change request) process for the patch deployments
  • Experience in being able to identify and monitor interdependencies between various application implementation activities
  • Migrated Change Request system to JIRA for better reporting and API integration
  • Manage relationships and coordinate work between different teams at different locations
  • Produce Deployment, Run Books and Implementation Plans
  • Supported and implemented AWS related deployments
  • Implemented Rolling deployments without outages

Release Engineer/Software Release Manager

Lifelock
01.2015 - 06.2017
  • Implemented Subversion and GitHub branching and merging operations for Java Source Code applications
  • Implemented Bi-Weekly release process for Web and Mobile applications.
  • Received best employment Award for multiple quarters for supporting company wide projects
  • Responsible for creating new branches/Patch branches based on the request from DEV team
  • Experienced in production Maintaence deployments
  • Deploying the artifacts into the stage and production environment
  • Successfully completed the SSL project for the Lifelock
  • Experience working with .NET (IIS) deployment
  • Successfully migrated the batch jobs project in the Bamboo
  • Responsible for creating branches,tagging and merging in Subversionand GIT
  • Making release notes and Installation guides for end user so that user can easily walk through the installation without any issue
  • Built and led a team of Build & Release Engineers responsible for deployments to the QT, Stage and Production environments spanning a variety of technologies including: Java (Tomcat and WebLogic), .NET Framework, Linux, Windows, Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Physical Servers,VMs, Cloud Instances
  • Established cross training as a culture to remove single points of failure
  • Reduced Deployment defects from 25% to less than 5%
  • Worked on AWS cloud infrastructure to maintain Web servers on EC2 instances with AMIS behind Elastic load balancer with Auto-scaling to maintain scalability and elasticity to scale up and down the servers as per requirement
  • Reduced time spent in CAB meetings by 50%
  • Reduced the number of Emergency Changes by 40%
  • Decreased time from Change request submission to implementation from 6 business days to less than 24 hours
  • Implemented Post Mortems for every production incident with the goal to identify and drive process and technical improvements
  • Created maintenance plan and provided support for tools used by the Product & Technology Organization including: JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, Nexus,SVN
  • Communicate all key project plans, commitments, and changes including requirements, QA plans, schedule, and scope changes
  • Monitoring the build status and resolving build issues by going through the build.xml files
  • Publish build and release for daily in QA environment
  • Automated the deployment process to different environment in a rolling Fashion (With no down time)
  • Provide Admin support for the Atlassian tool suite – Bamboo, Jira, Confluence, etc
  • Working Experience on AWS–creating IAM policies, rules for users, groups and AWS components
  • Creating S3 buckets and EC2 instances AWS for different environments
  • Familiar with AWS cli and automated the deployment process to aws in a rolling fashion (Deploying to one node at a time by taking Instances out of rotation from ELB and putting it back after deployment
  • Deploying JAR, WAR and EAR files to WebLogic, Tomcat, AWS using Jenkins and Bamboo
  • Used Jira as Ticketing System Tool to handle the issues/tasks/service requests created by multiple team members across the project

Education

Master of Science - Computer Science

Northwestern Polytechnic University
Fremont, CA
06.2013 - 12.2014

Bachelor of Science - CSE

JNTU
India
01.2007 - 05.2011

Skills

Version Control tools: GIT, SVN, Github

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Timeline

Staff Software Engineering Release Manager

Dexcom
01.2023 - Current

Senior Mobile Release Manager

Snapchat ( Snap Inc )
02.2019 - 01.2023

IT Devops Lead

Cydcor
07.2018 - 02.2019

Lead Release manager

ACT
06.2017 - 07.2018

Release Engineer/Software Release Manager

Lifelock
01.2015 - 06.2017

Master of Science - Computer Science

Northwestern Polytechnic University
06.2013 - 12.2014

Bachelor of Science - CSE

JNTU
01.2007 - 05.2011
Abhinav Reddy ChirraStaff Software Engineering Release Manager ( Web, Mobile Apps, Infrastructure, Salesforce, Hardware)