Our client is looking for a Senior Change & Release Manager
Context
The Release Manager is responsible for orchestrating, governing and safeguarding the end-to-end release process across the CMS 2.0 program. The role ensures that releases from multiple vendors and projects are aligned, controlled and deployed in a consistent and reliable manner, minimizing risks to the platform and business operations.
Key Responsibilities
1. Multi-Vendor release coordination
- Coordinate and align release planning across multiple vendors, domains and project teams.
- Ensure a consolidated and realistic release calendar across CMS 2.0, align with CMS 1.0 releases if needed
- Facilitate alignment between interdependent deliveries and manage cross-team dependencies.
- Act as the central point of contact for all release-related activities.
2. Release governance & process management
- Define, implement and enforce the release management framework for the program.
- Ensure adherence to release stages, further set up of quality gates and approval processes.
- Maintain clear release criteria (entry/exit) and ensure readiness before deployment.
- Drive continuous improvement of release processes through automatization and release practices.
3. Release impact & risk management
- Own and facilitate the release impact assessment process across all involved parties.
- Ensure that functional, technical, operational and business impacts are clearly identified and managed.
- Support projects and vendors in applying the release impact procedure consistently.
- Proactively identify risks (e.g. conflicts, data inconsistencies, performance issues) and ensure mitigation actions are in place.
4. CMS 1.0 & CMS 2.0 alignment
- Ensure alignment and coordination between CMS 2.0 releases and ongoing CMS 1.0 operations.
- Maintain visibility on dependencies and constraints between both environments.
- Safeguard business continuity during the transition phase.
- Provide clear reporting and oversight on combined release impacts across both platforms.
5. Communication & stakeholder management
- Provide transparent and structured communication on release planning, status, risks and decisions.
- Align with program governance bodies, project leads, vendors and operational teams and DGO’s
- Facilitate release boards or forums to support decision-making.
6. Monitoring & reporting
- Track release progress, risks and issues across all stakeholders.
- Provide consolidated reporting at program level.
- Ensure post-release evaluation and lessons learned are captured and applied.
7. CI/CD pipeline governance & enablement
- Define and promote a standardized CI/CD strategy across all vendors and teams contributing to the CMS 2.0 platform.
- Ensure alignment on build, integration, testing and deployment pipelines to enable consistent and reliable releases.
- Safeguard the integration of multiple vendor pipelines into a coherent end-to-end release flow.
- Ensure that automated testing (unit, integration, regression) is embedded within the CI/CD pipelines to support release quality.
- Monitor pipeline performance (e.g. build success rate, deployment frequency, failure recovery) and drive improvements.
- Collaborate with architecture and platform teams to ensure pipelines are aligned with platform standards, security and compliance requirements.
- Promote release automation and shift-left practices to reduce manual intervention and increase release predictability.
Within the CMS 2.0 program, the company is evolving towards a multi-vendor, multi-domain delivery model on a shared central platform. This introduces significant complexity in coordinating releases across multiple stakeholders, ensuring alignment and safeguarding platform stability while maintaining continuity with CMS 1.0.
Skills
- Demonstrable experience in the context of testing
- Demonstrable experience in multi-stakeholder release coordination (multiple teams)
- Demonstrable experience with CI/CD pipelines and release automation
- Demonstrable experience in setting up and improving release management processes
- Demonstrable experience with release governance and risk management
- Demonstrable experience in translating release strategy into operational impact
- During a potential interview, the candidate must be able to sufficiently demonstrate a structured, proactive, and solution-oriented mindset. The person must be able to critically question releases
- Demonstrable experience with Topdesk
- The candidate holds an ISTQB Foundation certificate
- Demonstrable experience in coordinating and facilitating operational teams
- Demonstrable experience with the use of an ITSM tool such as Topdesk or others
- Demonstrable knowledge of MS Office applications, including in particular Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (must be clearly demonstrated in the CV!!!)
- Demonstrable relevant work experience in the domain of release management
- Language requirement: English at European CEFR level C1
- Language requirement: Dutch or French at European CEFR level C1
- Language requirement: Understanding of the second national language at European CEFR level B2
- Demonstrable knowledge of the Belgian energy market
- Certification: ITIL v4.0 Foundation or higher
