Lead Software Release Manager

Mastercard is hiring a Lead Software Release Manager in Pune.

Our Purpose Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. Title and Summary Lead Software Release Manager

Responsibilities

Release Planning & Scheduling

• Own the enterprise release calendar across 7-8 products and platforms.
• Develop and maintain integrated release schedules accounting for:

o Development milestones o Integration testing windows o Pre-production validation o Performance and scalability testing o Production deployment windows o Customer onboarding and certification timelines

• Coordinate release trains and major program increments across multiple teams.
• Balance competing priorities while optimizing release frequency and stability.

Dependency Management

• Identify, document, track, and proactively manage:

o Product-to-product dependencies o Program-to-program dependencies o Infrastructure dependencies

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in large-scale distributed systems or payment-processing platforms.
• Experience coordinating releases across globally distributed teams.
• Working knowledge of tools such as:

o Jira o Azure DevOps o GitHub Actions o Jenkins o XL Release / Digital.ai Release o Splunk o Confluence

• PMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe, ITIL, or DevOps certifications.
• Experience supporting highly regulated or mission-critical production environments.

Success Measures A successful Software Release Manager will:

• Maintain a synchronized release schedule across 7-8 products with minimal conflicts.
• Improve release predictability and on-time delivery.

About Mastercard

We are seeking an experienced Software Release Manager to lead end-to-end release planning, scheduling, and orchestration across a portfolio of 7-8 interconnected software products and platforms. This role is responsible for establishing and maintaining an integrated release calendar that balances product roadmaps, engineering capacity, testing environment availability, customer commitments, regulatory requirements, and cross-program dependencies. The ideal candidate thrives in complex enterpris