Release Management Lead

Washington, AR - USA

Monthly Salary: Not Disclosed

Posted on: 7 hours ago

Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Position Title: Release Management Lead
Location: Washington D.C. 20250 (Hybrid on site & remote)
Employment Type: Full Time
Experience Level: Senior

Role Summary

The Release Management Lead will design govern and continuously improve the enterprise release and deployment framework across dozens of applications and services. Acting as the central point of coordination you will partner with development operations security compliance and business stakeholders to ensure that every change-whether a minor patch or a major version upgrade-is delivered safely predictably and on schedule.

Key Responsibilities

#	Responsibility
1	Strategic Release Planning Build and maintain a multi tier release calendar that aligns with business priorities regulatory windows and technology roadmaps. Forecast capacity identify potential conflicts and communicate plans to senior leadership.
2	End to End Release Execution Oversee all phases of the release lifecycle: requirement gathering build test staging deployment verification and post release validation. Ensure each step follows documented processes and compliance controls.
3	Cross Team Coordination Lead a Release Advisory Board (RAB) and coordinate with product owners Scrum Masters architects security QA and infrastructure teams. Resolve inter application dependencies and mitigate risks before cut over.
4	Automation & Tooling Champion the adoption and optimization of CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Jenkins Azure DevOps GitLab) and release orchestration tools (e.g. ServiceNow Octopus Deploy Harness). Develop scripts and templates to automate repetitive tasks and improve deployment speed.
5	Risk & Change Management Conduct rigorous impact analyses maintain a robust change control database and enforce rollback/contingency plans. Generate risk based release scores and present them to the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
6	Metrics & Continuous Improvement Define KPIs (e.g. deployment frequency lead time change failure rate MTTR). Produce regular release health dashboards and drive root cause analysis for incidents to improve quality and efficiency.
7	Compliance & Security Ensure releases meet FedRAMP NIST FISMA and internal security standards. Integrate security scanning vulnerability assessment and audit trails into the release pipeline.
8	Mentorship & Team Development Guide a small team of Release Coordinators/Engineers. Conduct training sessions on best practices tooling and governance frameworks.
9	Stakeholder Communication Prepare executive level briefs release notes and post mortem reports. Act as the primary point of contact for any release related escalations.
10	Vendor & Third Party Management Manage relationships with external SaaS providers platform vendors and integration partners to align their release cycles with internal schedules.

Required Qualifications

Category	Minimum Requirements
Education	Bachelors degree in Computer Science Information Technology Engineering or a related field (or equivalent experience).
Experience	8 years of progressive experience in release management configuration management or DevOps within large scale enterprise environments. At least 4 years of experience leading release programs that span multiple applications with significant inter dependencies.
Technical Skills	Deep knowledge of release methodologies (Waterfall Agile SAFe). Hands on experience with CI/CD platforms (Jenkins Azure DevOps GitLab CircleCI). Proficiency in infrastructure as code (Terraform CloudFormation Ansible). Strong grasp of version control (Git) and branching strategies. Familiarity with containerization/orchestration (Docker Kubernetes).
Process & Governance	Expertise in ITIL/ITSM change management ServiceNow or comparable ticketing tools. Demonstrated ability to design release governance frameworks and RAB/CAB processes.
Security & Compliance	Practical experience ensuring releases meet FedRAMP NIST 800 53 or other federal security standards.
Leadership	Proven track record of leading cross functional teams influencing senior stakeholders and driving cultural change toward automation and reliability.
Communication	Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to translate technical concepts for executive and non technical audiences.
Analytical	Strong problem solving aptitude with data driven decision making (KPIs dashboards trend analysis).

Preferred Qualifications

Certifications: ITIL Foundation/Intermediate Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) AWS/Azure/GCP Cloud Architect Certified DevOps Engineer or PMP.
Experience in federal or defense contracting environments.
Prior exposure to ServiceNow Release Management module.
Knowledge of Application Performance Monitoring tools (New Relic Dynatrace).
Familiarity with SecDevOps practices (SAST/DAST SBOM secret scanning).

Core Competencies

Competency	Description
Strategic Vision	Anticipates downstream impacts of releases across a portfolio of interrelated systems.
Risk Management	Balances speed of delivery with rigorous risk assessment and mitigation.
Collaboration	Bridges silos; works effectively with developers ops security compliance and business owners.
Automation Mindset	Continuously seeks to eliminate manual steps and increase repeatability.
Customer Focus	Prioritizes stability and availability to meet end user expectations.
Adaptability	Thrives in a fast changing environment handling multiple concurrent release windows.

Position Title: Release Management Lead Location: Washington D.C. 20250 (Hybrid on site & remote) Employment Type: Full Time Experience Level: Senior Role Summary The Release Management Lead will design govern and continuously improve the enterprise release and deployment framework...