IT Release Manager

Envision Employment Solutions is currently looking for an IT Release Manager for one of our partners, a leading Digital Bank!

Job Summary

The IT Release Manager owns the end-to-end release management process for the Bank's digital platforms, ensuring that all software and infrastructure releases are coordinated, tested, secured, and deployed with minimal risk to business operations. This role acts as the final checkpoint between development/QA readiness and production deployment, driving go/no-go decisions and safeguarding the stability of production environments.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate end-to-end release planning and scheduling across development, QA, infrastructure, security, and business teams.
• Lead go/no-go decision meetings based on quality assurance results, testing outcomes, defect status, and overall release readiness criteria.
• Ensure quality and security sign-off across staging and production environments, including validation of test results, performance metrics, and penetration testing outcomes.
• Execute production validation activities, including smoke testing and cross-domain validation across infrastructure, data, and workplace systems.
• Define, own, and manage rollback and contingency procedures for failed or high-risk releases.
• Maintain the release calendar and communicate release schedules, dependencies, and risks to stakeholders across the CIO function.
• Enforce release management governance, change control policies, and audit/compliance requirements applicable to banking environments.
• Drive continuous improvement of release processes, tooling, and automation (CI/CD pipelines) to reduce release cycle time and risk.
• Maintain accurate release documentation, post-release reports, and lessons-learned reviews..

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in release management, change management, or software delivery, ideally within banking or financial services.
• Strong understanding of ITIL release and change management practices.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and DevOps toolchains.
• Solid understanding of QA processes, security testing, and performance testing methodologies.
• Familiarity with regulatory and audit requirements applicable to the banking/financial sector.
• Strong stakeholder management, decision-making, and communication skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple concurrent releases.