Product Release & Deployment Manager - Craft Education

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider Craft Education as the next step in your career.

Craft Education is on a mission to solve skilled labor shortages by powering work-based learning pathways for all.

At Craft, we're revolutionizing the apprenticeship degree, combining on-the-job learning with accredited instruction to create innovative educational pathways that accommodate working professionals and meet employer needs. Our flagship product - Craft Connect - helps organizations administer apprentice degree programs and address mission-critical data and reporting needs. Through the same platform, Craft is also transforming how on-the-job learning converts into academic credits.

Our team of technology, education and workforce professionals also provides technical assistance to organizations looking to launch and manage apprenticeship degree programs. We are working tirelessly to accelerate the expansion of these programs along with the data infrastructure that underpins them.

If you're looking to join the work-based learning revolution, we'd love to talk with you. At Craft, you'll have the opportunity to solve hard problems in a high-growth startup environment and make a lasting impact on the future of education and workforce development. We couldn't be more excited to advance this work as a team of innovative, collaborative and mission-oriented professionals - we hope you'll consider joining us.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Job Description

The Product Release & Deployment Manager ensures Craft Education's product rollouts are seamless, risk-mitigated, and well-communicated. This role, which sits at the intersection of product management, engineering, QA, and go-to-market teams, plans, coordinates, and tracks product releases, ensuring that internal teams are prepared and external stakeholders have the right materials. It also monitors post-release adoption and performance to continuously refine the release process and ensure product success

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

Release Coordination & Risk Management

• Owns end-to-end release planning, ensuring alignment across Product, Engineering, QA, and GTM teams.
• Develops success criteria, risk mitigation plans, rollback strategies, and post-release monitoring processes.
• Works closely with Engineering & QA to ensure rigorous pre-release testing and validation.

Internal & External Readiness

• Owns internal readiness for product launches, ensuring Sales, Customer Success, and Support teams are prepared.
• Develops and maintains all external release communications (e.g., release notes, user documentation, FAQs, training materials).
• Works with Customer Success & Marketing to ensure new features are effectively positioned for end-users.

Post-Release Performance Tracking & Strategic Feedback

• Partners with Product Operations to define which adoption metrics should be tracked post-launch.
• Owns monitoring and reporting on release success, sharing insights with stakeholders to inform future launches.
• Partners with UX Research on staged rollouts, A/B testing, and experimentation, leveraging feature flags (e.g., Statsig) to optimize release impact.
• Collaborates with Product Operations to run post-launch feature-specific CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) surveys, ensuring structured feedback collection.

Process Optimization & Best Practices

• Works with Engineering & DevOps to refine release best practices, ensuring smooth deployments.
• Partners with UX Research & Product Operations to refine structured workflows for continuous product improvement and iterative rollouts.
• Documents and iterates on release playbooks, best practices, and checklists to drive process consistency

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Typically requires a University Degree or equivalent
• Minimum of 5 years related experience in Release Management, Product Operations, or Software Deployment.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, staged rollouts, and release best practices.
• Proficiency with release management tools (e.g., Jira Release Management, LaunchDarkly, GitHub Actions, or similar).
• Experience in writing and managing release documentation, internal enablement materials, and user-facing release notes.
• Ability to track, measure, and report post-release adoption and performance metrics.
• Comfortable managing multiple releases in a fast-paced, startup environment.
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in SaaS, EdTech, or enterprise software environments.

• Familiarity with feature flagging tools (Statsig, LaunchDarkly, etc.).

• Strong understanding of A/B testing methodologies and experimentation.

• Experience conducting structured post-launch customer feedback collection (CSAT, feature adoption studies, etc.).

Work Location

Work location is determined by role and business needs. In addition to our headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT, we have several satellite locations across the US. Senior leadership, administrative functions, and technology teams are typically assigned to work in one of our office locations. While this position will begin with a Remote/Work-From-Home designation, this position will work "In-Office" once a dedicated space in Nashville, TN is established.

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Position & Application Details

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.