CI/CD & Release Automation Lead

Reigate Source: WhatJobs

See advert for pay

Description

WTW Insurance Consulting and Technology are embracing Continuous Delivery as part of our Software Development Life Cycle. At the heart of this, we are looking for a talented and experienced SaaS / DevOps Release Manager to join us to help expand and manage our approach, capabilities, tools, and colleagues to deliver agile release management.

Description

WTW Insurance Consulting and Technology are embracing Continuous Delivery as part of our Software Development Life Cycle. At the heart of this, we are looking for a talented and experienced SaaS / DevOps Release Manager to join us to help expand and manage our approach, capabilities, and colleagues to deliver agile release management.

This role will be responsible for and lead key aspects of release management including planning, scheduling, communications, team coordination, deployment, and feature release. You will work closely with teams and stakeholders across the business including product management, engineering, and security to lead continuous release plans and establishing continuous improvement practices.

The Role

As a SaaS / DevOps Release Manager, You Will

Release Management & Governance

Establish and manage modern release practices including quality gates, automated checks, and release readiness criteria
Ensure alignment with governance, security, and compliance requirements while minimising manual intervention through automation
Manage risks, dependencies, and release decisions across multiple product teams

DevOps & Automation Enablement

Drive the adoption of CI/CD pipelines, release orchestration, and infrastructure automation across teams
Work directly with engineering teams to embed release processes into delivery workflows (e.g. pipelines, GitOps, environment promotion models)
Identify opportunities to replace manual release activities with automated, repeatable processes
Support teams in implementing progressive delivery techniques (e.g. feature flags, canary releases, blue/green where applicable)

Tooling & Platform Integration

Collaborate with platform and engineering teams to align on DevOps tooling, pipeline standards, and release frameworks
Ensure release processes are integrated into developer tooling and platform capabilities, not operated separately
Contribute to standardisation of release patterns across SaaS products

Continuous Improvement & Metrics

Define and track DORA-style metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, recovery time)
Drive continuous improvement through data-led insights
Contribute to the evolution of ICT DevOps and SDLC practices

Coaching & Capability Building

Coach teams on DevOps practices, automation, and modern release approaches
Help teams transition from manual, process-heavy release management to automated, flow-based delivery
Act as a bridge between engineering, architecture, and governance

Qualifications

What you’ll bring

The Essential Skills/experience For This Position Are

Demonstratable experience (at least 3 years) in release management for a SaaS organisation releasing new features and updates on a frequent (e.g., team sprint) basis to customers
Great working experience of Agile, SDLC and DevOps practices to effectively fulfil the role
Experience in modern release management tooling e.g. ServiceNow, BMC
Managing multiple and varied internal stakeholders and customers and cross-functional teams
Contributions into wider organisational practice improvement and evolution
Knowledge and passion for new techniques to achieve release management goals and evidence to show continual improvement of release management approach
Strong working knowledge of CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions) and release automation
Experience implementing pipeline-based release controls, automated testing, and deployment strategies
Understanding of infrastructure as code (e.g. OpenTofu) and environment management concepts
Experience with cloud-native SaaS architectures (preferably Azure)
Familiarity with observability, monitoring, and release health metrics
Ability to work hands-on with engineering teams to diagnose and improve delivery pipelines
Understanding of modern DevOps practices and principles (GitOps, trunk-based development, progressive delivery)
Experience improving developer experience and reducing delivery friction through automation