The Role
DriveNets is seeking an experienced and strategic Vice President of Program & Release Management to lead the end-to-end lifecycle of complex programs and software releases across our networking portfolio. This executive will drive cross-functional execution across Product, Engineering, and Quality to ensure high-quality delivery to global customers and partners.
The VP will play a critical leadership role in the R&D management team, scaling program and release governance in a fast-growing, globally distributed environment. This includes orchestrating large-scale software releases and aligning platform evolution with customer commitments.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Program Leadership
- Lead large-scale programs spanning a 300+ engineering organization across multiple products, platforms, and technologies.
- Translate business and product strategy into executable multi-quarter roadmaps.
- Define development processes to support scale and quality.
- Establish metrics and reporting frameworks to provide transparency and risk insights to the team.
Release Management & Execution
- Own the release lifecycle from planning through all execution phases to customer go-to-market readiness.
- Ensure structured coordination of software and hardware releases across Engineering, QA, and delivery teams.
- Integrate AI-based tooling and analytics (release forecasting, risk detection, automation, quarter planning readiness, customer trends) to drive release excellence.
Cross-Functional Management
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Customer Support to align priorities and remove blockers.
- Manage dependencies and trade-offs across diverse stakeholder groups.
Team Leadership
- Build, mentor, and scale a high-performing Program & Release Management organization.
- Promote a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
What Success Looks Like
- Achievement of reliable, predictable, and high-quality delivery across major strategic releases.
- Continuous and clear executive visibility into program risks, trade-offs, and timelines.
- Strong alignment between engineering execution and company strategy.
- Scalable processes and frameworks that adapt to rapid growth and technological complexity, including AI-driven features.
- 10+ years in senior program management and release leadership roles within a technology company, preferably in Networking, Infrastructure, or AI/Cloud platforms.
- Proven track record of delivering complex, cross-functional programs at scale in global organizations.
- Deep understanding of software release lifecycles and execution governance.
- Strong strategic mindset with the ability to influence senior leadership.
- Experience with AI-enabled execution tooling and data-driven release insights preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Success in scaling PMO/Release teams in an advanced engineering organization within a fast-growing, mid-sized startup.
- Exposure to networking, security, or telecom domains.
Skills Required
- 10+ years in senior program management and release leadership roles within a technology company
- Proven track record of delivering complex, cross-functional programs at scale in global organizations
- Deep understanding of software release lifecycles and execution governance
- Strong strategic mindset with ability to influence senior leadership
- Experience building, mentoring, and scaling Program & Release Management organizations
- Experience with AI-enabled execution tooling and data-driven release insights
- Success scaling PMO/Release teams in fast-growing engineering startups
- Exposure to networking, security, or telecom domains
What We Do
DriveNets is a rapidly growing software company that has created a radical new way for service providers and hyperscalers to build their networking infrastructure. DriveNets Network Cloud and DriveNets Network Cloud-AI are new innovative networking solutions that apply the cloud architectural approach to high-scale networking. They bring together the scalability of standard Ethernet Clos architecture with the high performance and reliability of service provider networking, delivering optimal networking performance, scale and cost structure for service providers and hyperscalers. Founded by Ido Susan and Hillel Kobrinsky, two successful telco entrepreneurs, DriveNets Network Cloud is the leading open disaggregated networking solution based on cloud-native software running over standard white boxes. Over three funding rounds, DriveNets raised $587 million. Its solutions are used by tens of service providers globally and are in proof-of-concept and lab trials at dozens of operators and hyperscalers, consistently ranking #1 in trials for breadth of capabilities and solution quality. AT&T, the largest backbone in the US, deployed DriveNets Network Cloud across its core network, and DriveNets is currently transporting more than 52% of AT&T’s core network traffic. DriveNets is engaged with over 100 Tier-1 operators and cloud-providers on large projects in North America, Asia and Europe.
