We are seeking a hands on experienced Senior IT Change & Release Manager. The Change & Release Manager role exists centrally within the Office of the CIO function. The role will oversee the planning, scheduling, and control of changes and releases to the IT production environment. This role ensures that all changes are implemented with minimal disruption to IT services and that releases are delivered efficiently and effectively. Role & Responsibilities Change Management:

• Lead the assessment, analysis, and approval of change requests.
• Chair the Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings to review and authorize changes.
• Ensure changes are documented, communicated, and implemented according to the change management process.
• Lead Pre-CAB sessions for high-impact areas (ie Infrastructure) to validate change readiness, dependency mapping, technical risk, and rollback strategies.
• Work cross-functionally with infrastructure, application and governance & control teams to ensure changes are architecturally sound, impact-aware, and scheduled with minimal business disruption.
• Build and maintain a structured weekend and out-of-hours change implementation process, with conflict managed change windows, and comms alignment.
• Own the Change Communication Plan-ensuring stakeholder comms, and business awareness are aligned for all major changes and releases.
Release Management:
• Lead the assessment, analysis, and approval of Release requests according to the Release Review Board process.
• Work with cross-functional teams to ensure forward planning and alignment on successful release delivery.
• Chair the Release Review Board (RRB) that assesses releases 4 weeks ahead of implementation ensuring all releases are reviewed, tested and validated.
• Monitor and report on release progress, including any issues or risks.
• Conduct post-release reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of releases and identify opportunities for improvement.
Framework Ownership & Governance:
• Own and continuously improve the Change Management and Release Review Frameworks, Policies, standards, processes aligning to ITIL v4 and modern delivery models (Agile/DevOps).
• Enforce governance standards across all change types (emergency, normal), with clear change classifications and approval paths.
• Integrate Release & Change Management frameworks with forward-planning capabilities
• Identify and implement process improvements to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of the change & release processes.
• Stay up-to-date with industry best practices and emerging trends in change and release management.
Data, Reporting & Continuous Improvement:
• Develop and maintain dashboards to track success/failure rates, volume, service impact, release cadence, and change hot spots.
• Highlight systemic trends, recurring weak points, and improvement opportunities.
• Report on all monthly/quarterly/annual volumetrics, trends, KI's.
  
  Deep understanding of ITIL practices, especially around Change and Release Management.
• Ability to manage and coordinate complex change and release schedules, ensuring minimal disruption.
• Agile/DevOps understanding, experience integrating modern delivery methods into traditional frameworks.
• Ability to define, maintain, and evolve Change and Release Management frameworks.
• Ability to work with Infrastructure, Application, Security, and Governance teams.
• Experience enforcing governance controls, traceability, and compliance standards.
• Familiarity with change/release management tools (eg, ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence), and dashboard/reporting tools.
• Strong facilitation skills to lead meetings and build consensus among diverse stakeholders - CAB/RRB
Desirable Skills
• ITIL v4 Intermediate, or advanced.
• Committed to continuous learning and improving processes.
• Capable of uplifting change maturity across teams via mentoring and training.
• Stakeholder Partnering, Leadership & Enablement.
• DevOps, Agile or Lean certifications.
• RCA or problem-solving training (eg, 5 Whys, Kepner-Tregoe).
  
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