James Tonkin
Senior Release Operations Manager @Xsolis
Signup · Get unlimited contacts
WORK HISTORY
Senior Release Operations Manager @Xsolis
Nashville, TN, US
I lead and evolve release operations across Data Science Engineering, Data Integration, and Enterprise Data Warehouse teams, focusing on automation, reliability, and cross-team alignment. My role bridges engineering, QA, DevOps, and product to ensure smooth, predictable delivery.Key Focus Areas:• Drive coordinated release execution across technical domains with clear ownership and minimal friction• Build dashboards and runbooks to track release readiness, blockers, and post-release validation• Standardize release lifecycle terms (“ready,” “validated,” “done”) across teams• Facilitate retrospectives that lead to real process improvements• Partner with DevOps on tooling, automation, and CI/CD strategyKey Projects & Wins:• GitLab POC: Led the Release Ops proof of concept, scoping use cases, gathering stakeholder input, and presenting findings to leadership, laying the foundation for future CI/CD automation• Release Page Automation: Automated Confluence release pages using Jira metadata and templates, cutting manual effort and boosting documentation accuracy• Runbook Standardization: Created a shared, version-controlled runbook adopted across core teams, defining rollback, validation, and escalation flows• Dashboard Development: Built Jira-based dashboards to visualize hotfix trends, validation gaps, and post-release follow-ups• Retrospectives: Established a structured retro process that improved scope control, fix version handling, and accountability• Ops Maturity Roadmap: Delivered a 6–12 month plan for advancing automation, observability, and cross-team consistency
SKILLS
ABOUT JAMES TONKIN
A proven track record solving problems and quickly learning new technologies. Experience combines a strong work ethic and flexibility to work with large and small unit teams. Cultivated a positive culture with fellow employees, that was based on integrity, loyalty, open communication, and trust. Recognized for adapting and being constructive through major technology and organizational changes. Every day brings a new challenge and I find problem-solving a very rewarding experience. In the past, I have worked on cell site hardware and I am a nine-year veteran of the US Army.
This profile is compiled from publicly available professional sources. Unifers is not affiliated with or endorsed by LinkedIn. Request removal of this profile.