Release Manager, Clash of Clans

You are someone who can thrive in a dynamic, fast moving environment, and take ownership of planning, coordinating and overseeing releases for the live game, doing your part to maintain a high quality bar. You will work closely with the Clash of Clans team as well as partner teams elsewhere in the company to identify release needs and communicate plans. You will plan our release schedule and scope, balancing the need to ship updates and fixes in a timely fashion against considerations like team capacity and our live operations schedule.

For larger updates you will support production and our Quality & Releases subcell in aiding the development team to meet delivery timelines for mandatories, clarify expectations for post-content lock, and negotiate backup plans as needed. Outside the main update cycle you will work closely with our Release Engineer and QA team, owning the plan for what we release via minor updates and when, and supporting the execution of those plans.

Your work will have a large impact on the massive audience of one of the biggest mobile games of all time. We’re looking for someone who ideally has years of experience and knowledge acquired from the gaming or mobile industry. To be successful in this role, you will need to be proactive in supporting the team to deliver quality releases easily and confidently. If you are interested in owning the shipping of exciting updates to tens of millions of daily players, hit that apply button.

Responsibilities

• Support production and Quality & Releases team in driving adherence to delivery timelines for major releases, bringing clarity and oversight to what goes to release branches
• Shared ownership of client upload & submission, including collaboration with ASO, marketing, community & other partners
• Collaborate and support post-release hotfixing efforts, working with QA and Engineering leads to prioritise urgent efforts
• Own & maintain accurate release and version information across Confluence and Jira
• Proactively secure visibility of upcoming release needs, and collaborate to identify the appropriate release type and timeline
• Aggregate and batch similar release needs to minimise disruption to players
• Plan releases around our live ops & events landscape, avoiding or minimising impact to major events or esports
• Optimising and improving release workflows, processes and documentation
• Strategic planning in support of new release ambitions, driven by new tech and infrastructure

Requirements

• Multiple years of experience working in a gaming or mobile company in a Release Management or adjacent role: we want someone who can inherit how we currently work, but also challenge and reimagine our approach
• Experience working on mobile games or comparable mobile products
• Excellent planning and management skills, able to flexibly adjust plans as needs shift and expand
• Experience working effectively in a hybrid work environment, collaborating seamlessly with people both onsite and remote
• Excellent communication skills, able to manage and set expectations without upset, to clearly communicate plans and needs, to bring calm and clarity to any situation, and to push back and set unpopular expectations when needed
• Comfortable with uncertainty and navigating logistically or technically complex challenges
• Proactive go-getter who will seek out people and information, not wait for it to come to you
• Ability to travel to Helsinki frequently (if London-based)

Nice-to-haves

• Previous experience in Production or QA roles is a plus
• Basic familiarity with continuous release and continuous deployment