Job Description

Release Manager – Workday
Perm Role
Remote

The Workday Environment & Release Manager is responsible for the operational governance, administration, and execution of the Workday platform lifecycle across all tenant environments.

This role ensures that configuration changes, releases, tenant refreshes, and deployments are performed in a controlled, repeatable, auditable, and low-risk manner while maintaining platform stability and business continuity.

Serving as the operational owner of Workday environment and release processes, this position coordinates across HR, Finance, Security, Reporting, Integrations, and AMS partners to ensure that all changes are planned, tested, approved, documented, and successfully deployed.

This role partners closely with Workday Platform Operations & Engineering leadership to operationalize governance standards, maintain release discipline, and drive continuous improvement in environment management and deployment practices.

The role supports the governance model established by Workday Platform Operations & Engineering leadership and serves as a key contributor to platform stability, audit readiness, and operational excellence. 

Responsibilities:

• Own the operational administration of all Workday tenant environments, including Production, Sandbox, Sandbox Preview, Implementation, Customer Central, and future Workday-provided tenants.
• Maintain environment inventories, usage documentation, refresh schedules, and lifecycle records.
• Coordinate tenant refresh planning and execution activities.
• Conduct post-refresh validation and environment readiness reviews.
• Monitor environment health and identify operational risks.
• Ensure environments are available and properly configured to support project, release, testing, and production activities.
• Own the enterprise Workday release calendar and deployment schedule.
• Coordinate all production releases, feature deployments, and configuration migrations.
• Facilitate release readiness reviews and go/no-go decision support.
• Ensure testing, approvals, documentation, and signoffs are completed before production deployment.
• Manage release communications and stakeholder coordination.
• Lead post-deployment validation and stabilization activities.

Governance & CAB Administration

• Administer the operational components of the Workday Change Advisory Board (CAB) process.
• Review change requests for completeness and adherence to governance standards.
• Coordinate CAB meetings and document decisions.
• Track approvals, risk assessments, implementation plans, and deployment evidence.
• Ensure all production changes follow established governance procedures.
• Establish and administer migration standards across all tenant environments.
• Ensure end-to-end traceability of configuration changes throughout the development lifecycle.
• Coordinate tenant comparison and validation activities.
• Maintain rollback procedures, deployment evidence, and migration documentation.
• Support regulatory, audit, compliance, and internal control reviews.
• Administer production readiness processes and deployment checklists.
• Validate testing completion, business approvals, technical approvals, and implementation readiness.
• Maintain release documentation and evidence repositories.
• Identify and escalate release risks and readiness concerns.
• Support incident response and deployment-related issue resolution.

Operational Reporting & Continuous Improvement

• Publish release and environment status reporting.
• Track deployment success rates, environment utilization, CAB metrics, and operational KPIs.
• Identify process improvement opportunities within release and environment management processes.
• Drive standardization and maturity across tenant management and deployment activities.
• Perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned. Responsibilities may evolve to meet business needs, organizational priorities, and the continued maturation of Workday Platform Operations & Engineering. Cross-Functional Partnership & Stakeholder Engagement
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with business, technology, and Workday CoE stakeholders.
• Partner with Workday CoE functional leads across Product Management & Governance, Integrations, Reporting & Analytics, Security, HR, and Finance to coordinate release schedules, environment activities, business readiness efforts, testing timelines, and stakeholder communications.
• Communicate Workday environment, release, migration, and deployment activities in clear, business-focused language to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partner with business and technical teams to understand operational requirements, assess the impact of platform changes, and support successful release and deployment execution.
• Coordinate cross-functional planning activities related to tenant refreshes, production deployments, Workday feature releases, and environment readiness events.
• Support Change Advisory Board (CAB), governance reviews, and release readiness discussions by providing release status, deployment schedules, environment availability information, implementation risks, and operational documentation.
• Publish and maintain operational reporting, including release dashboards, deployment status updates, environment calendars, change summaries, refresh schedules, and post-release reporting.
• Serve as a trusted operational partner to stakeholders by proactively identifying deployment risks, communication needs, scheduling conflicts, and environment-related concerns.

Skills:

• Strong understanding of Workday tenant structure, environment types (Production, Sandbox, Sandbox Preview, Implementation), tenant refresh processes, migration practices, and environment lifecycle administration.
• Workday Customer Central: Hands-on experience managing transport packages, configuration promotion requests, migration activities, and cross-tenant deployment coordination.
• Release & Change Management: Experience coordinating enterprise release management and ITSM change control processes (ITIL-aligned), including CAB participation, deployment planning, readiness reviews, and change documentation.
• Configuration Migration & Version Control: Experience maintaining migration records, deployment documentation, configuration traceability, rollback procedures, and audit-ready change records.
• Operational Compliance & Audit Readiness: Knowledge of change management controls, release documentation requirements, audit evidence retention, and deployment governance processes.

Leadership & Business Competencies

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to communicate Workday environment, release, and deployment activities effectively across technical and business teams.
• Highly organized with exceptional attention to detail, capable of managing multiple concurrent releases, environment activities, refreshes, and change requests while maintaining documentation and governance standards.
• Strong problem-solving skills and operational discipline, with the ability to identify risks, coordinate issue resolution, and drive effective outcomes in complex environments.
• Collaborative and team-oriented approach, partnering effectively with Functional Leads, Security, Reporting, Integrations, AMS providers, and Technology stakeholders.
• Continuous improvement mindset, identifying opportunities to improve release processes, environment administration, operational reporting, and deployment effectiveness.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience supporting Workday or comparable enterprise SaaS platforms.
• 3+ years of experience in release management, environment management, application operations, or platform administration.
• Experience coordinating enterprise application deployments across multiple stakeholder groups.
• Experience working within formal change management and governance frameworks.
• Experience supporting Production, Sandbox, and testing environments within a structured SDLC.
• Experience developing and maintaining operational procedures, documentation, and controls.

Other Requirements:

• Workday Pro Certification in one or more functional areas, such as Platform, HCM, Finance, Payroll, Security (required).
• ITIL Foundation Certification (preferred)
• Kainos SmartShield administrator experience (a plus)