Lead Release Manager

Job ID 10139385 Location Celebration, Florida, United States Business Disney Experiences Date posted Jan. 30, 2026

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Job Summary:

At Disney Experiences Technology, we design and deliver more than 400 digital and physical products that bring Disney stories to life in unexpected ways. From theme parks and resorts to cruise ships and beyond, our global team of technologists, designers, and innovators creates seamless, immersive experiences that delight millions of Guests and Cast Members around the world.

The Disney Signature Experiences and Data team delivers innovative technology solutions across Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club, and our global tour businesses. We support Guest and Crew experiences at sea, enable commercial growth through digital platforms, and lead the segment’s data strategy. With a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and strategic expansion, we build the systems that support immersive experiences and unlock new opportunities for growth.

Disney Cruise Line – This role is on the Disney Cruise Line team, which delivers shipboard Guest and Crew systems, commercial platforms, web and app experiences, and infrastructure operations that support seamless journeys at sea.

Responsibilities:

The Lead Release Manager owns the end‑to‑end release lifecycle for a multi‑service, multi-experience operating platform. The role establishes and enforces release governance (calendar, gates, approvals, evidence), coordinates change enablement, manages risk and rollback readiness, and harmonizes fast flow with safe operations. Operating practices are anchored in ITIL v4 Change Enablement, DevOps/DORA metrics, SRE guardrails (SLOs/error budgets), Scaled Agile‑compatible release rhythms, and feature‑management standards (e.g. LaunchDarkly, Statsig, Split) that decouple deployment from release.

Governance & Calendar

Publish and run the platform release calendar (sprint alignment, scope‑lock, certification checkpoints, freeze/blackout windows).
Define and administer Release Independence Tiers (Cadenced / Independent Deployment / Fully Independent) with objective criteria and onboarding/audit routines.
Change Enablement (ITIL v4) & Compliance
Chair/co‑chair CAB/CCB; ensure risk‑based approvals and complete, auditable change records (plan, tests, evidence, rollback).
Uphold SOX/PCI evidence and production certification standards (security, performance, accessibility).

Quality Gates & Readiness

Enforce non‑functional gates: performance budgets, vulnerability thresholds, error budgets/SLOs, accessibility checks.
Require runbooks, rollback plans, on‑call escalation paths, and environment choreography (data/config/flags) before go‑live

Progressive Exposure & Feature Management

Codify standards for flag governance (naming, environments, permissions, audit) to decouple deployment from release.
Operate dark launches (backend toggles without UI exposure), progressive percentage rollouts with automated halt/rollback rules, and guarded/kill‑switch policies tied to health/business KPIs (e.g: LaunchDarkly).
Coordinate targeted/cohort rollouts (e.g.: Statsig) and A/B / multivariate tests (e.g.:Split/Statsig) with product/analytics; you own guardrails and decision checkpoints.

Deployment Path & Environment Strategy

Standardize artifact promotion paths (dev → test → stage → prod), canary/soak durations, and go/no‑go criteria. Determine timely needs of ephemeral environments to enable fast flow delivery.
Keep authoritative release notes and ensure observability is wired to release decisioning dashboards and incident workflows.

Incident Integration & Learning Loops (SRE)

Treat feature toggles and rollbacks as first‑line mitigations; run command‑center operations for major events and execute rehearsed procedures.
Lead blameless post‑mortems; fold findings into standards, automation, and checklists.
Metrics, Reporting & Continuous Improvement (DORA)
Track and publish DORA metrics (e.g.: deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR) and policy compliance (% gates passed, audit completeness).
Use data to optimize cadence, tiering, gate thresholds, and calendar patterns; drive platform‑wide improvement backlogs.

Stakeholder Communication

Provide transparent comms to engineering, ops/SRE, product, security/compliance, and executives; manage escalations on schedule/quality trade‑offs and coordinate around high‑traffic windows.

Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
7+ years in Release/Change Management for large, distributed systems; 3+ years leading multi‑team/platform releases.
Demonstrated implementation of ITIL v4 Change Enablement processes and audit‑ready evidence (e.g.: SOX/PCI).
Proven application of DORA‑driven continuous improvement and SRE practices (SLOs/error budgets, canary/soak, blameless post‑mortems).

Technical Skill Set

Hands‑on with CI/CD (e.g.: GitHub Actions, Harness, Azure DevOps, Jenkins), artifact repositories, automated testing, and security scanning.
Practical expertise with feature flags & experimentation: e.g.: LaunchDarkly, Statsig, Split (progressive/targeted rollouts, kill‑switches, KPI gating).
Cloud & containers (e.g.: AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes), GitOps deployment (e.g.: ArgoCD/Spinnaker).
Observability and APM stacks (e.g.: Splunk Observability, AppDynanmics, Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus/Grafana) integrated with release health and decisioning.

Ways of Working

Excellence in facilitation, executive communication, risk‑based decision‑making, and cross‑portfolio coordination.
Strong documentation discipline (release notes, CAB/CCB artifacts, runbooks, rollback evidence)

Preferred Qualifications

Led CAB/CCB programs with published calendars and portfolio visibility (e.g.: Smartsheet/Jira/Teams/SharePoint).
Certifications: ITIL v4, SAFe (RTE exposure), PSM II/A‑CSM, AWS/Azure/GCP, PCI ISA.
Background in SRE and inclusive/performance‑focused engineering (accessibility and performance budgets embedded in gates).
Master’s degree preferred (e.g., MS in CS/IS/Software Engineering) or relevant advanced coursework in DevOps/SRE/ITIL.

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About Disney Experiences:

Disney Experiences brings the magic of Disney stories and franchises to life through theme parks, resorts, cruise ships, unique vacation experiences, products and more around the world. Disney shines in the travel industry with six resort destinations in the United States, Europe and Asia; a top-rated cruise line; a popular vacation ownership program; and an award-winning guided family adventure business. Plus, Disney's global consumer products operations include the world's leading licensing business; the world's largest children's publishing brands; one of the world's largest licensors of games across all platforms; and Disney store locations around the world and on the web.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Walt Disney Attractions Technology LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Experiences.

Walt Disney Attractions Technology LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

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Explore this Location Celebration, FL

The picture-perfect community of Celebration, 25 minutes southwest of Orlando, is a place like no other. Founded by The Walt Disney Company in the 1990s and named one of Forbes Magazine’s prettiest neighborhoods in America, Celebration features an idyllic downtown with architecture inspired by traditional Southern towns.