A strategic and transformation-focused Head of Release Management role to modernize the release ecosystem across Product and Technology, leading the shift from manual, process-heavy release governance to a modern, data-driven and platform-enabled model. The role defines the long-term release strategy across multiple release types, shapes environment strategy, release intelligence and engineering enablement, and leads, coaches and develops the release management team. Works closely with Platform Engineering, DevOps, Security, Product, Quality, Cloud Operations and engineering leadership.
Responsibilities
Define and execute the release ecosystem strategy across Product and Technology; Embed release controls into developer workflows, deployment pipelines and platform capabilities; Establish automated, auditable and risk-based controls, including policy-as-code, automated compliance checks and release risk scoring; Define differentiated release models for product, service, emergency, security, platform, customer onboarding and AI/model releases; Lead release-led customer onboarding governance, including readiness, environment validation, support readiness and post-onboarding assurance; Shape AI-native release management practices for AI-generated code, agentic workflows, prompts, models and knowledge assets; Own or co-own environment strategy, shared environment governance, readiness, utilization and observability; Build release intelligence capabilities using telemetry, operational data and AI to predict deployment risks and readiness gaps; Drive engineering enablement by helping teams deploy and onboard customers safely, reliably and independently; Lead and develop a release management function focused on transformation, automation and continuous improvement; Build investment cases and transformation roadmaps to secure the tooling, automation, telemetry and platform capabilities required to modernize release management
Requirements
10+ years of experience in software delivery, release management, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, cloud operations, engineering program management or engineering leadership; Proven track record modernizing release, deployment or operational governance models across complex product, platform or service environments; Strong knowledge of CI/CD, progressive delivery, feature flags, deployment automation, policy-as-code, automated compliance, observability, SRE principles and modern engineering practices; Experience defining release approaches for planned, emergency, security, platform, service and out-of-band releases; Experience with environment strategy, shared environment governance, test environment utilization, customer onboarding readiness, environment observability and ephemeral or on-demand environments; Experience improving customer onboarding, production readiness, service transition or customer activation processes in a cloud, SaaS or enterprise software environment; Ability to use data, telemetry, dashboards, predictive insights or AI to improve release risk management, deployment reliability and engineering productivity; Experience building investment cases and transformation proposals to secure funding for tooling, automation, platform capability, environment improvements or operating model change; Strong stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence Product, Engineering, Platform, Security, Operations, Support and executive stakeholders; Proven change management capability, with experience moving teams from traditional governance models to modern, platform-enabled and evidence-based release practices; Strategic transformation leader who is a systems thinker, data-driven decision maker, AI-aware, security-conscious, and passionate about engineering enablement
Wielka Brytania · London
