JACOB MCKINLEY
Health Care Service Corporation
St. Louis,Missouri
10
years of professional experience
Results-driven Release Manager with over 8 years of experience in managing enterprise software and application releases in complex environments, including cloud and eCommerce. Expertise in release governance, risk management, and production deployment coordination. Focused on enhancing team processes, fostering Agile and Waterfall methodologies, and ensuring effective stakeholder communication throughout the release lifecycle.
Work History
Release Manager (Contract)
1 Year 7 Months- Own the end-to-end release lifecycle, including planning, scheduling, readiness, deployment execution, validation, and post-release activities across Agile and Waterfall delivery environments.
- Lead enterprise software and application development releases across multiple applications, platforms, and cross-functional technology teams, ensuring coordinated production deployments.
- Manage complex releases containing hundreds of implementation activities while maintaining clear ownership, execution sequencing, status visibility, and timely communication with technical and business stakeholders.
- Develop and maintain detailed Order of Activities (OOA) and implementation plans defining dependencies, sequencing, task ownership, durations, milestones, and execution timelines.
- Established and standardized release processes for teams; guided stakeholders through process changes and supported adoption of new release practices and governance expectations.
- Coordinated change readiness, approvals, risk assessments, implementation planning, rollback/backout readiness, and stakeholder communications for Change Management and CAB activities.
- Managed complex releases with hundreds of implementation activities, ensuring clear ownership, execution sequencing, status visibility, and timely communication with technical and business stakeholders.
Release Manager
6 Years 11 Months- Streamlined and standardized release processes, reducing overall release cycle time by more than 30% through improved planning, coordination, deployment practices, and team adoption.
- Managed software and application release planning, orchestration, verification, and implementation for Panera eCommerce platforms across QA, UAT, and production environments.
- Worked cross-functionally with development, QA, infrastructure, operations, product, and business stakeholders in Agile and Waterfall environments to drive release readiness and successful deployments.
- Coordinated change management activities such as change requests, CAB approvals, risk analysis, implementation planning, release documentation, rollback strategies, and stakeholder communications to ensure seamless release execution.
- Created and maintained comprehensive release schedules and implementation plans, detailing dependencies, ownership assignments, milestones, and communications throughout SDLC to enhance project visibility and alignment.
- Helped teams adopt improved deployment and release practices that reduced deployment errors, strengthened execution discipline, and improved the end-user experience.
- Facilitated post-release debriefs, captured lessons learned, communicated outcomes to stakeholders, and initiated continuous improvements to release governance and standard processes.
Education
Bachelor of General Studies
Skills
Release planning and calendaring
Change management
CAB governance
Jira
Confluence
ServiceNow
Bitbucket
Bamboo
Ansible
Jenkins
Risk assessment and rollback planning
MS Project
Sharepoint
Timeline
Release Manager (Contract)
Health Care Service Corporation
03.2025 - CurrentRead More
Release Manager
Panera Bread
10.2016 - 09.2023Read More
University of Missouri
Bachelor of General Studies
Read More