Senior Release Engineer

Role - Senior Release Engineer

Standard Title - Senior Engineer, Release

Location: Bangalore, India

About Us

Founded in 2014, Circles is a global technology company reimagining the telco industry with its innovative SaaS platform, empowering telco operators worldwide to effortlessly launch innovative digital brands or refresh existing ones, accelerating their transformation into techcos.

Today, Circles partners with leading telco operators across multiple countries and continents, including KDDI Corporation, Etisalat Group (e&), AT&T, and Telkomsel, creating blueprints for future telco and digital experiences enjoyed by millions of consumers globally.

Besides its SaaS business, Circles operates three other distinct businesses:

• Circles.Life: A wholly-owned digital lifestyle telco brand based in Singapore, Circles.Life is powered by Circles' SaaS platform and pioneering go-to-market strategies. It is the digital market leader in Singapore and has won numerous awards for marketing, customer service, and innovative product offerings beyond connectivity.
• Circles Aspire: A global provider of Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) solutions. Its cloud-based Experience Cloud platform enables enterprises, service providers and developers to deliver and scale mobile, messaging, IoT, and connectivity services worldwide.
• Jetpac: Specializing in travel tech solutions, Jetpac provides seamless eSIM roaming for over 200 destinations and innovative travel lifestyle products, redefining connectivity for digital travelers. Jetpac was awarded Travel eSIM of the Year.

Circles is backed by renowned global investors, including Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia), Warburg Pincus, Founders Fund, and EDBI (the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board), with a track record of backing industry challengers.

Role Description

As a 
Senior Release Engineer
, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that our SaaS application is deployed reliably, securely, and efficiently across
pre-production and production environments
for multiple clients. This role sits at the intersection of
Site Reliability Engineering, Release Management, and DevOps practices
, requiring both strong technical expertise and excellent stakeholder management skills.

You will be responsible for
end-to-end ownership of release activities
, from validating deployment readiness to executing and monitoring deployments, and ensuring post-deployment validation. A key aspect of the role is to
embed release readiness early in the SDLC (shift-left approach)
, working closely with development, QA, and product teams to ensure issues are caught early and deployments proceed seamlessly.

In addition to conducting deployments, you will be expected to
design and improve release workflows, automate evidence collection, and enforce governance standards
to make release processes more predictable and auditable. You will also collaborate with external and internal stakeholders—including client teams, engineering leads, and product owners—to ensure alignment, minimize risks, and deliver high-quality releases on time.

This role demands a balance of
technical depth
(CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, automation) and
process rigor
(release governance, compliance, and traceability), along with the ability to
communicate clearly under pressure
, especially during critical client-facing releases.

Key Responsibilities

• Deployment Management:

• Own and execute deployments for client pre-production and production environments.

• Ensure deployments are conducted within defined change windows and aligned with SaaS release practices.

• Release Readiness:

• Conduct readiness checks, ensuring all deployment prerequisites (artifacts, approvals, evidence) are complete.

• Collaborate with QA, DevOps, and product teams to validate deployment readiness.

• Shift-Left Release Practices:

• Embed release readiness into earlier phases of the SDLC.

• Define and enforce processes for deployment request submission, traceability, and accountability.

• Process & Automation:

• Drive automation for release management (workflows, approvals, evidence generation).

• Maintain CI/CD pipeline health and ensure consistency across client environments.

• Collaboration & Communication:

• Act as the primary release contact for product, engineering, and client stakeholders.

• Clearly communicate deployment status, risks, and post-deployment validation results.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8+ years of experience in Release Management, DevOps, or related roles, preferably in a SaaS environment.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, Jenkins, or equivalent).
• Experience with release management workflows (e.g., JIRA, ServiceNow).
• Knowledge of shift-left testing and release practices.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, OCI) and microservices architecture.
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to manage incidents under pressure.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with feature flag rollouts, canary deployments, and automated release evidence generation.
• Familiarity with DORA metrics and release performance measurement.
• Prior experience supporting regulated environments with compliance-driven release practices.

Nice to Have

• Exposure to SaaS multi-tenant architecture and release practices.
• Knowledge of observability/monitoring tools (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• Familiarity with DORA metrics and their application in SaaS release cycles.
• ITIL certification or Release & Deployment Management certification.

Data Protection and Privacy Statement

By submitting an application for this position, you, as the applicant, or your authorised representative(s), consent to Circles' Candidate Data Protection and Privacy Policy. You also agree to the collection, use, and/or disclosure of your personal data by us solely for recruitment purposes as specified in the Policy. You acknowledge that you have read and understood the Policy, are aware of your rights regarding your personal data, and accept the terms relating to international data transfers, where applicable. You further understand that you may withdraw consent at any time, which may affect our ability to consider your application. In instances where your personal data or application is submitted by a third party, it is understood that such third party has been duly authorised by you to disclose the relevant personal data and provide consent on your behalf, and that you have been made aware of this Policy.

To all recruitment agencies: Circles will only acknowledge resumes shared by recruitment agencies if selected in our preferred supplier partnership program.

Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Circles, employees or any other company location. Circles will not be held accountable for any fees related to unsolicited resumes not uploaded via our ATS.