Manager, Software Engineering & Release Management

Overview:

Were seeking an Engineering Manager who stays close to the codesomeone who can lead a team of software engineers take ownership of the release process for one or more product lines and thrive in a FedRAMP Moderate / CMMC Level 2 environment where change control and audit readiness are built into the day-to-day this role youll lead a team of software engineers own the full release lifecycle for one or more product lines and partner closely with Product Management QA and platform teams across Exostars broader R&D organization.

This role intentionally combines responsibilities that are often split across multiple positions. Our Engineering Managers are deeply connected to execution: running go/no-go release decisions with real technical context confidently approving change tickets and helping engineers resolve technical blockersnot just managing backlogs and tracking velocity. Youll actively use AI coding toolssuch as Claude Code and GitHub Copilotevery day and set the expectation for your team to do the same. AI-native development isnt optional at Exostar; its core to how we build.

This role reports to the Director R&D Engineering and operates within Exostars FedRAMP Moderate / CMMC Level 2 environment serving defense primes including Boeing and BAE Systems.

What Youll Own:

Engineering Delivery

• Lead a team of software engineers building production features across Exostars identity credentialing and supply chain security platform.
• Own the technical quality of your teams output architecture decisions PR reviews code quality and production reliability.
• Drive sprint execution: planning backlog refinement dependency management and delivery against committed milestones.
• Identify and resolve blockers before they become delays escalate when needed but own the outcome.
• Establish and maintain engineering metrics: deployment frequency change failure rate cycle time defect escape rate.

Release Management

• Own the release calendar and cadence across your product line(s) -from feature freeze through production deployment hotfix and post-release validation.
• Run release readiness reviews and go/no-go decisions: scope confirmation test coverage security scan results open defect risk rollback plan and stakeholder sign-off.
• Coordinate cross-team dependencies for releases that span engineering QA platform security and customer success you are the single throat to choke on the release.
• Drive the change management process in our FedRAMP Moderate / CMMC L2 environment: change tickets approver routing separation-of-duties enforcement and audit-grade evidence capture.
• Own deployment pipelines and release gates in Azure DevOps promotion criteria environment parity (dev/test/staging/prod/gov) automated quality gates and manual approval points.
• Manage feature flags canary rollouts blue/green deploys and dark launches; default to safer release strategies whenever theyre available.
• Coordinate release notes internal stakeholder comms and customer-facing release communications with product and marketing.
• Own post-release reviews: track release health metrics (lead time for changes deployment frequency change failure rate mean time to recover) and turn findings into durable process improvements.
• Own and rehearse rollback and incident response playbooks; lead release-related incident bridges when they occur.

AI-Native Engineering Leadership

• Use Claude Code and GitHub Copilot daily in your own workflow not as optional productivity tools as standard practice.
• Model AI-native development for your team: code generation agentic workflows AI-assisted PR review and automated testing.
• Apply AI tooling to release management workflows: automated release-notes drafting risk classification of incoming changes regression-suite triage and post-release retrospective synthesis.
• Drive adoption across your team: coach skeptics celebrate early adopters measure impact and share learnings org-wide.
• Stay current on the AI tooling landscape surface new tools and workflows to the Director when theyre worth evaluating.

Product & Roadmap Collaboration

• Partner with product managers to translate roadmap priorities into engineering scope and a credible release plan push back on ambiguity not on accountability.
• Participate in quarterly planning: capacity estimation sequencing release-window planning and dependency identification across teams.
• Maintain clear line of sight from customer commitments through sprint execution to a specific release for your team.
• Surface engineering and release-window constraints to product early dont absorb scope silently negotiate it explicitly.

People Leadership

• Build and sustain a strong engineering team by hiring well developing talent addressing performance gaps and making tough decisions when required.
• Lead consistent 1:1 conversation that prioritize coaching development and long-term impact.
• Build a team culture of end-to-end ownership: engineers who ship monitor and stand behind their systems in production including being on the call when their change is the one going live.
• Partner with the Director on career development frameworks and internal promotion pipelines.

Your day if you join us:

Required

• 7 years of software engineering experience with 3 years in an engineering leadership capacity managing a team.
• Demonstrated release management ownership in a regulated multi-environment SaaS context you have personally owned release calendars run go/no-go calls and signed change tickets that went to production.
• Hands-on daily user of AI coding tools Claude Code GitHub Copilot or equivalent. You use these yourself not just advocate for them.
• Comfortable in code: you conduct meaningful PR reviews write production code when it unblocks the team and can challenge architecture decisions with technical depth.
• Deep familiarity with CI/CD pipelines deployment automation environment management and release gating Azure DevOps preferred.
• Cloud-native engineering experience on Azure or AWS microservices containerization CI/CD IaC.
• Strong written and verbal communication you can write a crisp engineering spec draft a clean release note and hold your own in a cross-functional go/no-go call.
• U.S. Person. We are not able to consider candidates requiring sponsorship.

Preferred Qualifications

You are exactly who we are looking for if you:

• Experience in a FedRAMP CMMC HIPAA or equivalent regulated environment understanding of how compliance requirements land in the SDLC and in the change management process.
• Direct experience with change advisory boards (CAB) separation of duties and audit-grade release evidence SOC 2 FedRAMP or ISO.
• Azure depth: Entra ID managed identities Azure DevOps pipelines and release stages Azure Gov familiarity.
• Exostars primary stack: C#/.NET Angular Python TypeScript Kubernetes Terraform.
• Experience operating progressive delivery patterns at scale: feature flags (LaunchDarkly Unleash or similar) canary blue/green dark launches.
• IAM PKI credentialing or federated identity domain experience.
• Experience building or operating agentic AI workflows: MCP multi-tool pipelines AI-assisted code review release-notes generation or release-risk analysis.
• Track record of driving AI tooling adoption at team scale teach-the-trainer models adoption measurement coaching skeptics.

Why Exostar

• AI-native engineering org: Claude Code and Copilot are standard not experiments. Leadership actively backs it and uses it.
• Real compliance stakes: FedRAMP Moderate CMMC 110/110 Azure Gov multi-tenant. Engineering and release decisions matter here.
• A role where engineering judgment and release discipline are weighted equally you wont be asked to choose between speed and defensibility.
• PE-backed (Arlington Capital Partners) with the resources to invest and the urgency to execute.
• Direct line to a Director who is hands-on technically credible and invested in your development.
• Mission-driven: securing collaboration infrastructure for the Defense Industrial Base.

About Exostar

Exostars cloud-based platforms create exclusive communities within the Aerospace and Defense Life Sciences and other highly regulated industries where members securely collaborate share information and operate compliantly. Within these communities we build trust. By analyzing community data we provide insights and intelligence enabling organizations to make better timelier decisions mitigate risk and operate more efficiently.

• We believe in employee development: we promote internally and provide training and educational assistance.
• We provide a fun engaged workplace with social and community-building events.
• We offer comprehensive benefits and flexible time-off plans.

Exostar is an Equal Opportunity Employment Employer. The company provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race color religion sex national origin age marital status disability status or genetic information. Exostar is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all persons in all facets of employment including recruiting hiring compensation promotion training benefits transfers and working conditions.

Required Experience:

Manager