Do you actually need a Release Engineer to manage Salesforce DevOps? 

Ana Moreno joins Jack to share her incredible (and truly accidental) journey from the world of art history to the heart of tech. Before they dive into release management, Jack derails the conversation to hear all about the fascinating world of art fraud, including tales of Man Ray's lost negatives and fake Victorian photographs.

Once back on track, Ana pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to manage a complex, high-stakes Salesforce release process at a company that lives and breathes DevOps.

Tune in to learn:
- What the day-to-day life of a dedicated Release Engineer actually looks like.
- How GitLab manages weekly Salesforce releases with a 30+ person team across five pods.
- Strategies for handling merge conflicts as a "necessary evil."
- Ana's top advice for teams looking to overhaul their process (Hint: It's not just about buying a tool).
- The practical role AI is playing in their DevOps cycle today.

About DevOps Diaries: 
Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.

Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2

Subscribe to Gearset's YouTube channel: https://grst.co/4cTAAxm
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gearsethq

About Gearset: 
Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKW

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome Ana Moreno, Salesforce Release Engineer at GitLab
02:36 Ana's journey: The "Accidental Admin"
03:30 From art history to tech
09:33 Let's talk about art fraud!
15:14 From Admin to Release Engineer
22:35 What does a Release Engineer actually do all day?
25:48 Inside GitLab's weekly Salesforce release cycle
28:09 The challenge of managing 1,000+ Apex tests
33:07 Taming the "necessary evil" of merge conflicts
38:41 Key advice for teams overhauling their DevOps process
46:12 The real-world future of AI in the DevOps pipeline
50:57 Ana's Final Mantra