Assistant Manager - IT Change and Release control

Assistant Manager – IT Change and Release Control

Are you a strategic thinker with a passion for driving operational excellence in IT governance? We are seeking a dynamic and results-driven Assistant Manager – IT Change and Release Control to oversee our Change and Release Management processes, ensuring seamless IT deployments while minimizing risks and maximizing business alignment. In this pivotal role, you will lead end-to-end change and release governance, fostering collaboration across IT operations, development, security, and business stakeholders to deliver high-impact, low-disruption solutions.

As the custodian of our Change & Release Management framework, you will play a critical role in maintaining operational stability, compliance, and continuous improvement. Your expertise will drive informed decision-making, optimize release cycles, and align IT initiatives with strategic business objectives. This is an opportunity to shape IT governance, enhance service delivery, and empower teams to deliver value efficiently.

Key Responsibilities

In this strategic leadership position, your responsibilities will include:

• Change and Release Governance: Lead the review, assessment, and validation of change and release requests, ensuring alignment with business priorities while mitigating risks, conflicts, and dependencies. Facilitate Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) meetings to drive accountable decision-making and approval processes.
• Calendar and Scheduling: Own and maintain the Change & Release Calendar, coordinating planned changes, release windows, and blackout periods to minimize service disruptions and align with critical business events.
• Release Coordination: Plan, govern, and execute software and infrastructure releases across all environments (DEV, SIT, UAT, PROD), ensuring readiness, approvals, and adherence to release timelines while maintaining compliance with governance standards.
• Pre-Production Validation: Ensure all changes and releases meet rigorous readiness criteria, including testing evidence, rollback plans, risk assessments, security approvals, and business sign-offs before production deployment.
• Documentation and Compliance: Maintain comprehensive, auditable documentation for changes and releases, including requests, approvals, release notes, implementation steps, rollback procedures, and post-release outcomes to support transparency and accountability.
• Performance Monitoring: Track and analyze Change & Release Management KPIs, such as change success rates, emergency change frequency, release failure rates, and rollback occurrences, to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for process optimization.
• Post-Implementation Reviews (PIRs): Conduct and oversee PIRs to capture lessons learned, track corrective actions, and address systemic issues, ensuring continuous improvement in change and release processes.
• Audit Support: Assist in internal and external audits by providing evidence of process compliance, governance adherence, and improvement initiatives to maintain regulatory and organizational standards.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with IT operations, development teams, business units, cybersecurity, QA, and third-party vendors to coordinate change and release activities seamlessly, ensuring end-to-end alignment and execution.
• Communication and Transparency: Provide clear, timely updates to stakeholders on change and release statuses, risks, dependencies, and impact assessments, fostering trust and informed decision-making at all levels.
• Policy Enforcement: Enforce adherence to Change & Release Management policies, standards, and governance frameworks, ensuring alignment with ITIL best practices and organizational controls.

IT Demand Management

In addition to Change and Release Control, you will:

• Lead Demand Coordination: Oversee the demand management process, collaborating with Business Relationship Managers, Service Portfolio Managers, and Service Level Managers to understand and forecast IT service demand.
• Strategic Alignment: Align IT strategy with long-term business goals, ensuring that demand management supports organizational growth and operational efficiency.
• Issue Resolution: Identify and mitigate risks or challenges that may impact service delivery, proactively addressing bottlenecks to maintain smooth operations.
• Process Ownership: Own and configure tools or templates that support demand management, ensuring they are user-friendly, scalable, and aligned with organizational needs.
• Meeting Facilitation: Facilitate demand management meetings and workshops, guiding stakeholders through prioritization, resource allocation, and decision-making processes.
• Requestor Engagement: Work directly with requestors to prepare deliverables, clarify requirements, and ensure seamless progression of demand items through their respective phases.
• Disposition Tracking: Capture and track dispositions of demand items, ensuring they advance appropriately based on outcomes and stakeholder feedback.

Requirements

To excel in this role, you will bring:

• Education: A Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Experience: At least 5+ years of experience in IT Change Management, IT Change & Release Management, or IT Service Management, with a proven track record of driving operational excellence and governance.
• Certifications: ITIL Foundation certification (or equivalent) to demonstrate expertise in IT service management frameworks.
• Technical Skills: Exceptional communication, negotiation, and presentation skills to engage stakeholders at all levels. Strong organizational and time management abilities to balance multiple priorities effectively. A deep understanding of IT infrastructure, enterprise applications, and cloud environments, along with practical knowledge of Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines. The ability to assess technical risks without delving into execution-level details.

If you are a detail-oriented leader with a passion for IT governance and a commitment to driving operational efficiency, we invite you to join our team and make a meaningful impact on our organization’s success.