About this role
Purpose of the Job The Manager, Change & Release Management will lead the end-to-end Change and Release Management function across IT, combining strong DevOps release engineering capability with disciplined ITIL-aligned change governance. The role will oversee the formerly known DevOps team responsible for CI/CD development pipelines, daily production releases, deployment automation, and release readiness, while also owning the operational Change Management process in ServiceNow. The position is accountable for ensuring that changes are properly assessed, approved, scheduled, implemented, communicated, and reviewed with minimal disruption to production services. This includes maintaining the change calendar, driving CAB and release readiness forums, improving standard and emergency change models, strengthening auditability in ServiceNow, and ensuring releases are delivered safely, predictably, and with clear rollback and post-implementation review practices. Job Description Customer: Protect service availability and customer experience by ensuring production changes are planned, risk-assessed, approved, and communicated before implementation. Improve deployment quality and reduce failed changes, emergency fixes, and post-release incidents through stronger release discipline and post-implementation learning. Coordinate release windows and stakeholder communications so business and operational teams have visibility of upcoming production changes and potential impact. People: Manage and mentor the Change & Release Management team, including Sr. Analysts and DevOps/release engineers, with clear priorities, accountabilities, and operating rhythms. Build a collaborative culture between development, infrastructure, security, QA, service desk, product, and business stakeholders. Coach teams on ITIL change practices, release readiness expectations, ServiceNow change discipline, deployment governance, and operational excellence. Facilitate CAB, release readiness, go/no-go, and post-release review forums with clear decisions, actions, and ownership. Operations: Own and continuously improve the Change Management process in ServiceNow, including change models, approval workflows, risk and impact fields, templates, categorization, calendars, dashboards, and audit evidence. Oversee daily production releases and ensure release plans include scope, impacted services, prerequisites, implementation steps, validation, communications, rollback plans, and post-release checks. Govern CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation standards across tools such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, or equivalent platforms. Define and enforce release gates, branching and versioning standards, environment promotion controls, deployment traceability, and segregation of duties where applicable. Coordinate normal, standard, and emergency changes in line with risk, business impact, and required approval paths. Track and report operational KPIs such as change success rate, failed changes, emergency changes, release throughput, approval aging, deployment frequency, rollback events, and post-implementation review completion. Partner with Security and Infrastructure teams to embed DevSecOps controls, vulnerability checks, compliance requirements, and operational readiness into the release lifecycle. Maintain process documentation, work instructions, runbooks, knowledge articles, and training materials for Change and Release Management practices. Financial Results: Optimize tooling, licensing, automation, and resource utilization across release and change management platforms. Reduce operational cost and rework by minimizing failed deployments, unplanned outages, emergency changes, and manual release activities. Support budget planning for release automation, CI/CD tooling, ServiceNow enhancements, and team capability development. Job Requirements - Experience and Education Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field. Minimum 10+ years of experience across Change Management, Release Management, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or IT Service Management roles, with at least 4+ years in a people leadership or team lead capacity. Strong working knowledge of ITIL Change Management and Release Management practices, including CAB governance, risk assessment, standard/normal/emergency changes, release calendars, post-implementation reviews, and continuous improvement. Hands-on experience with ServiceNow Change Management, including change request workflows, approval routing, change calendars, reporting dashboards, templates, and audit evidence. Experience managing production releases across multiple applications, environments, and stakeholder groups, including daily or frequent release cycles. Strong understanding of CI/CD tools and practices such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, AWS CodeDeploy, or equivalent. Working knowledge of scripting and automation using Python, Shell, Bash, PowerShell, or similar languages. Experience with cloud and hybrid environments such as AWS, Azure, OCI, and on-premises platforms. Familiarity with infrastructure as code, configuration management, and container platforms such as Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, Docker, Kubernetes, or ECS is preferred. Good understanding of monitoring, logging, and observability tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, ELK Stack, Elastic APM, or equivalent. Strong communication, facilitation, stakeholder management, and decision-making skills, with the ability to balance delivery urgency against risk, compliance, and production stability. ITIL Foundation certification is preferred; ServiceNow certification or practical ServiceNow Change Management administration experience is highly desirable. Leadership Behaviors Building Outstanding Teams Setting a clear direction Simplification Collaborate & break silos Execution & Accountability Growth mindset Innovation Inclusion External focus Skills Communication Skills Decision Making Interpersonal Skills Leadership Skills Regulatory Compliance Stakeholder Management Management Reporting