What You'll Do :
The Director of Application Release and Readiness Testing will provide strategic leadership for the organization's application deployment, validation, and production readiness programs. This role is responsible for establishing comprehensive frameworks to ensure applications meet quality standards before release, validating deployment readiness across environments, and implementing automated deployment practices that accelerate software delivery while maintaining stability.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities :
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.
Partners with development and testing teams to deliver software releases to test and production maintaining highest possible standards of stability.
Oversees continuous improvement efforts by identifying and championing practical means of reducing time to market while maintaining high quality
Must be a willing self-starter, independent, and comfortable with a fast paced, dynamic environment
A team player who assists the team as required to achieve collective goals & delivery milestones including knowledge-share
Drive automation of release validation processes to accelerate deployment cycles
Implement release quality gates and evidence-based certification processes
Collaborate with development, operations, and business stakeholders to define release acceptance criteria
Establish metrics and KPIs to measure release quality, testing efficiency, and deployment readiness
Lead post-release validation activities and coordinate resolution of release-related incidents
Oversee the creation and maintenance of test environments that accurately mirror production
Testing and Validation Focus Areas
End-to-end release pipeline validation
Automated regression testing for release candidates
Load and performance testing before deployment
Integration and API compatibility verification
Security and compliance validation
Business process validation and user acceptance testing
Data migration and transformation validation
Configuration verification across environments
Post-deployment smoke testing and validation
Production readiness reviews and checklists
Assists Production Support by prioritizing engineering workloads across the team
Designs and oversees departmental and new employee training
Supervisory Responsibilities :
Manage a team
Qualifications :
The requirements listed are representative of the knowledge, skill, and / or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the primary functions.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
10+ years of experience in software testing, quality assurance, or release management
5+ years of leadership experience managing testing teams and processes
Strong understanding of test automation frameworks and continuous testing approaches
Experience implementing testing strategies for complex enterprise applications
Knowledge of DevOps practices and CI / CD pipelines
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerized applications
Strong understanding of performance testing methodologies and tools
Experience with test management platforms and defect tracking systems
Excellent analytical skills and attention to detail
Outstanding communication and stakeholder management abilities
Success Criteria
Establish standardized release readiness assessment frameworks
Implement metrics-driven quality gates for all application releases
Achieve 99% deployment success rate through improved pre-release validation
Technical Skills :
[Required] Programming / scripting experience in languages like Java, Bash, Python or Go
[Required] Knowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI / CD) tools (examples - GitHub, Jenkins, Artifactory, Docker, Compose, K8s)
[Required] Java experience
[Required] Experience with high speed distributed computing frameworks AWS EMR, Hadoop, HDFS, S3, MapReduce, Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Kafka Streams, Apache Flink etc.
[Required] Experience with distributed message brokers Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Amazon Kinesis, etc.
[Required] Experience with cloud technologies and migrations
[Required] Experience preferred with AWS foundational services like VPCs, Security groups, EC2, RDS, S3 ACLs, KMS, AWS CLI and IAM etc.
[Required] Expert knowledge of DevOps tools. Eg Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, Maven / Gradle, Nexus / Artifactory and CI / CD pipeline etc.
[Required] Experience developing and delivering technical solutions using public cloud service providers like Amazon, Google, etc.
[Required] Familiarity with monitoring related tools and frameworks like Splunk, ElasticSearch, Prometheus, AppDynamics
[Required] Working knowledge of DevOps tools. Eg Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Helm and CI / CD pipeline etc.
[Required] Experience following Git workflows
Education and / or Experience :
[Preferred] AWS certified solution architect / DevOps Engineer certification
[Preferred] Kubernetes, Kafka certification
[Preferred] Project / program management certifications
[Preferred] ITIL certification
Certificates or Licenses :
[Required] BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field, or equivalent experience
About Us
The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization. Founded in 1973, OCC is dedicated to promoting stability and market integrity by delivering clearing and settlement services for options, futures and securities lending transactions. As a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU), OCC operates under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. OCC has more than 100 clearing members and provides central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 19 exchanges and trading platforms. More information about OCC is available at www.theocc.com.
Benefits
A highly collaborative and supportive environment developed to encourage work-life balance and employee wellness. Some of these components include :
Visit https : / / www.theocc.com / careers / thriving-together for more information.
Compensation
Salary Range
$171,700.00 - $282,700.00
Incentive Range
23% to 30%
This position is eligible for an annual discretionary incentive compensation award, for which the target range is listed above (see Incentive Range ). The amount of such award, if any, will be based on various factors, including without limitation, both individual and company performance.
Step 1
When you find a position you're interested in, click the 'Apply' button. Please complete the application andattach your resume.
Step 2
You will receive an email notification to confirm that we've received your application.
Step 3
If you are called in for an interview, a representative from OCC will contact you to set up a date, time, and location.
For more information about OCC , please click here .
OCC is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Director Software Engineering • Chicago, IL, United States