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asking for a friend

As part of a small project I wrote some code some months ago.

The code passed my tests, code review, UAT by business analysts and everything was fine. When the time came for me to request that it be loaded to production I had a gut feeling something wasn't right. I double checked the code and found a very serious logical error.

The problem was that between the time it was loaded to production and the time it went live (can be anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks) the "fix" was going to deactivate another fix by someone else that was crucial to the business.

Embarresingly I reported it to management that I made a huge mistake.

The rest of the team has now also become aware since we're having meetings, sitting together assessing impact and discussing it openly. Senior management are also aware and want complete reports of what happened.

My manager is trying to help me remain calm telling me he is glad I spotted this before it went to production since we now have options. All options involve bringing our local office into the spotlight before the global corporation and having to explain how such a simple mistake was made in the first place. (This "simple mistake" isn't so simple or obvious but once it is pointed out it becomes very obvious, but it is difficult to pick up).

I've never made such a mistake in the workplace before and am extremely embarrassed about it and feel my "brand" has been tarnished. I am not sure if I should be apologetic, or just focus on finding a solution or just hand in my resignation now and move on. I feel terrible that I have wasted so much of the companies time on this already.

tl;dr
What is the best way to navigate this situation when I am personally responsible for a huge mistake in the workplace that is pure human error?

The difference between you and someone less capable is the gut-feel that something was wrong. This gut feel is borne by experience, and forged by previous mistakes.

The concern needs to shift from blame, onto how this situation can be avoided in the future. The best person to identified the process defect that allowed this issue to pass testing and review by multiple levels of the business is you.

You need to get rid of the mindset that it a pure human error. There is no such thing. There is human error coupled with defective processes, or multiple humans making errors, but if it's important, it can't be down to a single person making a single error.

Don't compound the businesses pain my jumping ship when it's time to knuckle down and improve things. If they ask for your resignation, you can decide what to do then, but until then, you have to keep working hard.