Change and Release Specialist

Job Purpose The Change & Release Specialist is responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing changes and software releases by ITIL 4 best practices. This role ensures that changes are implemented with minimal service disruption and that releases are delivered efficiently and reliably into the production environment. Key Responsibilities Change Enablement Take ownership of the end-to-end change process, including assessment, authorization, and scheduling of changes. Evaluate change requests for risk, impact, and alignment with business goals. Facilitate Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings and ensure timely decision-making. Ensure proper documentation, communication, and post-implementation reviews of changes. Release Management Own the planning, coordination, and execution of software and infrastructure releases. Define and maintain release schedules in coordination with project managers and development teams. Ensure release packages are built, tested, and deployed in a controlled and repeatable manner. Coordinate deployment plans and rollback procedures to mitigate potential issues. Deployment Coordination Control and coordinate deployment activities for planned releases, including scheduling, resource coordination, and communication. Collaborate with technical teams to facilitate deployment tasks, oversee deployment activities, and monitor progress. Help troubleshoot deployment-related incidents and coordinate resolution efforts as needed Cloud Deployments & Automated Pipelines Coordinate and oversee application and infrastructure releases across environments. Ensure release plans, schedules, and communication are documented and agreed with stakeholders. Support deployment execution by liaising with technical teams, ensuring adherence to approved change processes. Track and report on release success rates, rollback incidents, and deployment-related issues. Maintain release documentation, change records, and post-implementation reviews. Assist in continuously improving change and release processes to reduce risk and downtime. Pre-Production Environment Management Coordinate with technical teams to ensure pre-production environments are available for testing before releases. Validate that test results and signoffs are obtained before deployment to production. Support environment readiness checks (e.g., access, data, and configuration) to reduce release risks. Maintain a schedule of environment usage to avoid conflicts between projects and releases. Facilitate communication between QA, development, and operations to ensure smooth release preparation. Monitoring and Observability Coordinate with monitoring and support teams to ensure adequate coverage of new releases. Facilitate setup of alerts and escalation paths in line with change and release processes. Ensure post-deployment validations are performed and documented. Participate in post-implementation reviews and assist in identifying root causes of failed or degraded releases. Track release-related incidents and feed lessons learned into process improvements. Security & Compliance Work with security and compliance teams to ensure releases meet organizational and regulatory requirements. Verify that security signoffs and approvals are obtained before production deployments. Ensure change records include security considerations, risk assessments, and mitigation plans. Support access control reviews and proper authorization for release activities. Contribute to audit readiness by maintaining accurate release and change documentation. Networking & Infrastructure Collaborate with infrastructure teams to confirm the readiness of networking and system components before releases. Ensure release schedules align with infrastructure availability and planned maintenance windows. Track and document dependencies on infrastructure changes that impact releases. Facilitate communication between application, infrastructure, and operations teams to reduce release risks Documentation and Reporting Maintain release documentation, including release notes, deployment instructions, and version control information. Prepare status reports, release metrics, and performance indicators to track the progress and success of release activities. Contribute to post-implementation reviews, retrospectives, and lessons learned sessions to capture feedback and drive continuous improvement. Stakeholder Communication Act as the liaison between development, operations, QA, and service management teams. Communicate release and change activities to stakeholders clearly and proactively. Align change and release initiatives with business priorities, timelines, and risk appetite. Conduct stakeholder meetings, workshops, and training sessions to gather requirements and address concerns related to release activities. #J-18808-Ljbffr