Senior Specialist - Change And Release

Inception42; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 391,000 - 614,000; Full time

Job summary

Inception42 in Abu Dhabi invites a senior Change & Release Manager to coordinate production changes across engineering teams. You will ensure release readiness, manage risk, and document evidence from delivery pipelines, supporting smooth SaaS deployments in a fast-paced environment.

The role emphasizes enforcing controls proportionate to risk, maintaining change records, and guiding go/no-go decisions with clear communication to stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Strong practical experience coordinating production changes and software releases across multiple technical teams.
• Working knowledge of ITIL change enablement and release management, with evidence of applying controls proportionate to risk.
• Understanding of software delivery lifecycles, version control, CI/CD pipelines, environment promotion, testing and deployment approaches.
• Ability to challenge incomplete release plans, dependency assessments and rollback assumptions while working constructively with engineers.
• Experience maintaining change records and release evidence in ITSM and engineering tools, with accurate reporting and follow-through.
• Clear written and verbal communication, strong planning skills and sound judgement during incidents, conflicting priorities and time-sensitive decisions.

Responsibilities

• Operate and improve change enablement and release practices, applying agreed policies and escalating exceptions to the appropriate decision owner.
• Review changes for customer impact, dependencies, risk, testing evidence, implementation steps and recovery readiness. Ensure the right owners make and record approval decisions.
• Maintain standard, normal and emergency change paths. Develop pre-authorised change models with clear eligibility criteria and review their ongoing suitability.
• Coordinate release plans and calendars across teams, identifying shared-service conflicts, business constraints and dependencies early.
• Confirm release readiness with Engineering, Quality and Support, including acceptance evidence, known issues, configuration and data changes, runbooks and support handover.
• Facilitate go/no-go decisions and targeted change reviews; record decisions and unresolved risks with accountable owners.
• Agree deployment validation, rollback or recovery criteria, including situations where database or data changes cannot be simply reversed.
• Work with engineering teams to capture change and release evidence from delivery pipelines and repositories, reducing manual duplication while preserving traceability.
• Coordinate release notes, maintenance notices and stakeholder updates. Explain expected impact, timing and support arrangements in language users can understand.
• Track post-release health and early-life support with operational teams. Coordinate recovery decisions and incident handover when changes cause service degradation.
• Review failed and emergency changes, track corrective actions and report on change failure, approval delays, release predictability and recovery performance.
• Within the first six months: Change paths, decision authorities and release readiness expectations are clear and in consistent use; Assigned releases have visible dependencies, communication plans and tested recovery arrangements; A baseline exists for change outcomes, approval delays and release-related incidents.
• Within the first twelve months: Changes and releases demonstrate improved predictability and fewer avoidable failures against agreed baselines; Routine changes flow efficiently through approved models and automated evidence capture; Post-release learning results in visible improvements to testing, readiness and recovery.

Skills

Change coordination

ITIL release management

CI/CD pipelines

Release lifecycle

Version control

Communication

Job description

Job Description

Inception42, a G42 company, is the region’s leading innovator of AI-powered domain-specific as well as industry-agnostic products, built on a rich heritage of research and development. Within the G42 ecosystem, Inception42 functions as the core intelligence layer – transforming data and compute infrastructure into real-world, applied AI solutions. Beyond its commercial endeavors, Inception42 is committed to creating positive societal impact. For more information, please visit www.inceptionai.ai

Overview

Inception42, a G42 company, is the region’s leading innovator of AI-powered domain-specific as well as industry-agnostic products, built on a rich heritage of research and development. Within the G42 ecosystem, Inception42 functions as the core intelligence layer – transforming data and compute infrastructure into real-world, applied AI solutions. Beyond its commercial endeavors, Inception42 is committed to creating positive societal impact. For more information, please visit www.inceptionai.ai

Overview

Enable Inception42 to introduce changes and releases safely, predictably and at the pace a product company needs. You will coordinate change risk, release readiness and communication across services supporting internal teams and external customers.

This is a senior practitioner role with independent responsibility for assigned changes and releases. You will make controls practical, evidence-based and proportionate to risk, working closely with the teams building and operating the products.

Works with the Lead Specialist, IT Service Management, Product Engineering, Quality Engineering, Application Support, Platform Reliability, Infrastructure and Information Security.

Responsibilities

What You’ll Own

• Operate and improve change enablement and release practices, applying agreed policies and escalating exceptions to the appropriate decision owner.
• Review changes for customer impact, dependencies, risk, testing evidence, implementation steps and recovery readiness. Ensure the right owners make and record approval decisions.
• Maintain standard, normal and emergency change paths. Develop pre-authorised change models with clear eligibility criteria and review their ongoing suitability.
• Coordinate release plans and calendars across teams, identifying shared-service conflicts, business constraints and dependencies early.
• Confirm release readiness with Engineering, Quality and Support, including acceptance evidence, known issues, configuration and data changes, runbooks and support handover.
• Facilitate go/no-go decisions and targeted change reviews; record decisions and unresolved risks with accountable owners.
• Agree deployment validation, rollback or recovery criteria, including situations where database or data changes cannot be simply reversed.
• Work with engineering teams to capture change and release evidence from delivery pipelines and repositories, reducing manual duplication while preserving traceability.
• Coordinate release notes, maintenance notices and stakeholder updates. Explain expected impact, timing and support arrangements in language users can understand.
• Track post-release health and early-life support with operational teams. Coordinate recovery decisions and incident handover when changes cause service degradation.
• Review failed and emergency changes, track corrective actions and report on change failure, approval delays, release predictability and recovery performance.
• Within the first six months: Change paths, decision authorities and release readiness expectations are clear and in consistent use; Assigned releases have visible dependencies, communication plans and tested recovery arrangements; A baseline exists for change outcomes, approval delays and release-related incidents.
• Within the first twelve months: Changes and releases demonstrate improved predictability and fewer avoidable failures against agreed baselines; Routine changes flow efficiently through approved models and automated evidence capture; Post-release learning results in visible improvements to testing, readiness and recovery.

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For

• Strong practical experience coordinating production changes and software releases across multiple technical teams.
• Working knowledge of ITIL change enablement and release management, with evidence of applying controls proportionate to risk.
• Understanding of software delivery lifecycles, version control, CI/CD pipelines, environment promotion, testing and deployment approaches.
• Ability to challenge incomplete release plans, dependency assessments and rollback assumptions while working constructively with engineers.
• Experience maintaining change records and release evidence in ITSM and engineering tools, with accurate reporting and follow-through.
• Clear written and verbal communication, strong planning skills and sound judgement during incidents, conflicting priorities and time-sensitive decisions.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting a SaaS or product business with frequent releases and customer service commitments.
• Exposure to feature flags, progressive rollout, automated validation and database migration controls.
• Relevant ITIL, Agile or DevOps qualifications backed by practical release experience.

Participates in agreed release windows and exceptional out-of-hours change or recovery activity, coordinated with the relevant delivery and support teams.

Inception42 is building AI systems designed for practical deployment at scale — across industries, infrastructure, and national-level initiatives.

If you want to work close to both advanced AI capability and real-world execution, we’d like to hear from you.

What We Look For

If you are a performance-driven, inquisitive mind with the agility to adapt to ambiguity, you will fit right in. You should be eager to explore opportunities to build meaningful collaborations with stakeholders and aspire to create unique customer-centric solutions. Bias for action and a passion to conquer new frontiers in the AI space is at the heart of the Inception42 community.

What Working At Inception42 Offers

Culture: An open, diverse and inclusive environment with a global vision that encourages personal growth and focuses on ground-breaking, industry-first innovations.

Career: Outstanding learning, development & growth opportunities via structured training programs and innovative, high‑tech projects.

• Rewards: A competitive remuneration package with a host of perks including healthcare, education support, leave benefits and more.

If you can confidently demonstrate that you meet the criteria above, please contact us as soon as possible.