Release Manager

About this role

Thank you for considering Tailscale. If this job description resonates with you, please apply. Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic! About Tailscale Tailscale is making safe connection effortless by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are.

From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital. About the Role We’re looking for a Release Manager to own how Tailscale ships our product, both internally and to customers.

You’ll build and run our release coordination process and create the operational practices that coordinate product and engineering. You’ll work closely with engineering leads, product managers, TPMs and support. At first you’ll focus on building release management from the ground up: setting the release cadence, defining roles, building tooling, and agreeing on norms with the teams involved in releases. Later, it will grow into creating processes around other parts of how product and engineering collaborate, like operational metrics.

You should understand how software gets shipped, including branching strategies, build pipelines, feature flags, and rollout mechanics. Your technical aptitude will allow you to design release processes that engineers trust and use. Tailscale moves fast and your processes should help us maintain our speed. When a process works well, it is nearly invisible - it keeps the right people informed, stays out of engineers’ way, and gives the team a plan.

Key Responsibilities Design, implement, and continuously improve Tailscale’s release management process: including release cadence, readiness criteria, rollout coordination, and go/no-go decisions Build and maintain the tooling, templates, runbooks, and documentation that make release processes repeatable and low-friction Partner with engineering leads and product managers to surface risk early and drive resolution before it becomes a crisis Define and track operational metrics that reflect the health of our release practices (e.g., release frequency, change failure rate) Keep releases on schedule by facilitating cross-team planning rituals that keep engineering and product coordinated Identify and drive systemic improvements to how we operate, using data and judgment to prioritize what actually matters What We Are Looking For 5+ years in engineering operations, release management, or a closely related role at a software company Direct experience building or significantly improving release management processes Technical fluency: you understand software development deeply enough to have credible conversations with engineers about build systems, deployment pipelines, branching strategies, and production operations Strong instincts for what process is worth having and what’s just overhead, and optimizing process for trust and adoption Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to build structure from scratch Nice to Have Experience with both client and server software release processes Experience at a developer tools, infrastructure, or security-focused SaaS company Familiarity with DORA metrics and how to use them to drive meaningful improvement Experience with feature flag systems, progressive rollouts, or canary deployments as release tools Experience scaling operational practices through periods of rapid team or product growth Hands-on experience with Tailscale at work or home As a company, we strive to maintain fair and equitable compensation practices within our team across all roles and all levels.