Release Manager / Performance Test Lead
12-Month Contract | Sydney | Hybrid
We're partnering with a leading Australian retail organisation to find a Release Manager / Performance Test Lead to join a high-performing engineering function responsible for some of the organisation's most critical customer-facing platforms.
This is a unique opportunity to combine enterprise release management, stakeholder leadership, and performance testing capability uplift within a complex technology environment.
The Opportunity You'll be responsible for managing major releases across critical applications, coordinating multiple engineering squads, and leading a team of Performance Test Engineers to ensure systems remain resilient during peak trading periods.
This role sits across the broader engineering organisation and works closely with Engineering Leaders, QA, Platform Engineering, Product teams, and senior stakeholders to ensure successful delivery and operational excellence.
Key Responsibilities
- Own and manage major production releases across critical enterprise applications
- Coordinate release activities across multiple engineering squads and stakeholders
- Lead release planning, readiness assessments, go/no-go decisions, and post-release reviews
- Manage and mentor a team of Performance Test Engineers
- Drive performance testing strategy, planning, execution, and continuous improvement
- Partner closely with QA, Engineering, Platform and Delivery teams
- Identify risks, dependencies, and issues across release cycles
- Champion automation and process improvements within the performance testing function
- Support critical release activities, including occasional out-of-hours deployments
About You:
We're open to candidates from a range of enterprise environments including retail, banking, telecommunications, technology, utilities, and other large-scale organisations.
You'll bring:
- Proven experience as a Release Manager, Environment Manager, Test Manager, or similar leadership role
- Experience managing enterprise-scale production releases
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills
- Experience leading testing, QA, or performance testing teams
- A strong understanding of release governance, risk management, and change processes
- Confidence making decisions in high-pressure production environments
- Experience working within Agile and DevOps delivery models
- Exposure to CI/CD pipelines and release automation practices
Nice to Have
- Performance testing experience with tools such as JMeter, k6, LoadRunner, or similar
- Experience within eCommerce, retail, or customer-facing digital platforms
- Exposure to large monolithic applications and modern distributed architectures
- Experience driving automation and maturity improvements within testing functions
What's On Offer
- 12-month initial contract
- Opportunity to lead critical releases across a large enterprise environment
- Direct influence across engineering, quality, and platform teams
- High-visibility role working closely with senior technology leadership
- Long-term transformation roadmap and ongoing investment in engineering capability
This is an urgent fill 12 month contract day rate role. If you're an experienced Release Manager looking to combine release leadership with performance testing oversight in a complex enterprise environment, we'd love to hear from you.