About this role
About Us Network International is the largest Financial Technology company in Middle East and Africa. Payments is our core business where we provide services in more than 50 countries – UAE, Jordan, South Africa, Egypt are some of our key markets. Apart from payments, we provide services on Data and Insights, Lending, Insurance, Risk Solutions, etc. Our core customers are businesses at every scale and segment, though recently we are growing in direct to consumer card segment as well. Our EVP : At Network International, we always stay ahead. . In the fast-paced world of financial services, we thrive on innovation, agility, and purposeful collaboration. We invest first in our people, empowering you to make bold decisions, learn fast, and grow your expertise alongside industry leaders. Here, solving complex problems means more than using cutting-edge technology; it’s about creating meaningful value for our customers, together. We foster a culture where trust, accountability, and achievement go hand in hand—because success isn’t just a goal; it’s how we work, every day, as one team. Job Purpose
The Lead Release Engineer plays a critical role in driving excellence across Network International’s client delivery and operational readiness. This role is responsible for defining and executing the Branch Strategy, consolidating production-ready code, and coordinating with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure seamless production readiness of incremental solutions. The Lead Release Engineer plays a critical role in maintaining release quality, with a focus on enhancing efficiency, reducing risk, ensuring compliance with internal and external standards, and improving release velocity through automation and process optimization. In addition to strategic oversight, the ideal candidate is expected to be hands-on with:
• Code management and version control
• Build and deployment automation
• Cloud technologies and CI/CD pipelines
This role demands a blend of technical expertise, process leadership, and stakeholder engagement to ensure successful and timely releases aligned with business goals.
Job Accountabilities
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define and maintain release calendars, ensuring alignment with business priorities and delivery timelines.
• Coordinate release readiness reviews and gatekeeping activities across development, QA, and production teams.
• Ensure timely communication of release scope, schedules, and dependencies to all stakeholders.
• Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines to support automated build, packaging, and deployment processes across environments.
• Ensure build integrity and traceability through version control and artifact management best practices.
• Define and enforce quality gates for release acceptance, including validation of test coverage, defect status, and environment readiness.
• Collaborate with QA and business teams to ensure successful completion of regression cycles prior to release sign-off.
• Maintain release dashboards and metrics to track quality trends and release performance.
• Manage configuration baselines and ensure controlled promotion of changes across environments.
• Maintain release documentation including change logs, and configuration records.
• Ensure compliance with change management policies and audit requirements.
• Act as the first point of contact for release-related issues, coordinating with development, QA, and support teams for timely resolution.
• Escalate critical risks and blockers to senior management with impact analysis and mitigation plans.
• Maintain incident logs and post-release retrospectives to drive continuous improvement.
• Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in release processes and propose automation or process enhancements.
• Drive adoption of DevOps practices and tools to improve release agility and reliability.
• Contribute to the evolution of release governance frameworks and best practices.
• Mentor junior release engineers and promote knowledge sharing across the team.
• Foster a collaborative culture between engineering, QA, and operations teams to ensure smooth release execution.
• Participate in cross-functional forums and initiatives to align release engineering with enterprise goals.
Experience/ Skills Required
• Degree in Computer Information Systems
• Strong log analysis and troubleshooting/Problem Solving skills
• Working knowledge of Atlassian toolset (Jira, Bamboo, Bitbucket) is mandatory
• Should have strong verbal and written communication skills
• Working knowledge of DevOps tools in context to CI/CD pipeline
• Working knowledge of Python, YML (Jinja), MAVEN, Batch Scripting
• Oracle SQL knowledge and practical experience are mandatory
• Experience of Cloud Computing/Virtual machines is mandatory
• Working knowledge of Azure, Terraform, Ansible is a plus
• Knowledge of Card Management System, SQL, Testing methodology is a plus