Release Manager

Leidos; South Canberra; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Life Days leave

Family-friendly workplace

Employee wellbeing programs

Job summary

Leidos Australia delivers IT and airborne solutions that protect and advance the Australian way of life. The Release Manager will own end-to-end release planning across multiple mission systems, coordinating across engineering, maintenance and security teams to ensure controlled, auditable deployments.

You will participate in CAB governance, drive readiness, and continuously improve release performance, with exposure to ASDEFCON frameworks in a defence/regulated context.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing releases in complex ICT environments.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and cross-functional chairing skills.
• ITIL change and release management experience.
• Structured, detail-oriented with auditability focus.
• Experience in defence/regulated environments desirable.
• Familiarity with ITSM tools such as Jira or ServiceNow.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end release planning across multiple mission systems and environments.
• Lead CAB governance, defining processes, and ensuring ASDEFCON-aligned compliance.
• Coordinate cross-system dependencies and reflect impacts, risks and resources.
• Act as central liaison for release activities with Engineering, Maintenance, Security, Help Desk and PMO.
• Drive release readiness, testing evidence, deployment and rollback plans.
• Continuously improve release performance, metrics, and long-term roadmaps.

Skills

End-to-end release management

Stakeholder engagement

ITIL release management

Scheduling & planning

Clear communication

Jira / ServiceNow

Education

Engineering background

Tools

Jira

ServiceNow

Job description

• Accrue up to an extra 12 days of leave per year through our Life Days program.

• Work with world leading technology business at the forefront of innovation.

• We’re a ‘Family Friendly’ certified workplace – we understand the often many and varied roles our team members need to play within their own unique family setting and actively support them.

Our team feel Leidos is a great place to work. Learn more about our culture and benefits by visiting us here https://www.leidos.com/company/global/australia/careers

Do Work That Matters

Leidos Australia delivers IT and airborne solutions that protect and advance the Australian way of life. Our 2000 local experts, backed by our global experience and network of partners, are working to solve the world’s toughest challenges in government, intelligence, defence, aviation, border protection and health markets.

Your New Role and Responsibilities

The Release Manager is accountable for planning, coordinating, governing, and executing all release activities across the sustainment program. This includes maintaining the end-to-end release schedule, ensuring all technical teams’ work (standard activities, backlog, help desk‑end release schedule, ensuring all technical teams’ work (standard activities, backlog, help desk driven‑driven, and strategic) is appropriately sequenced, assessed, and authorised prior to deployment.

The role is a key participant of the Change Advisory Board (CAB), including process definition, governance, stakeholder engagement, decision tracking, and alignment to ASDEFCON mandated‑mandated governance structures.

Supporting a shared services model across a multi‑system sustainment environment, release coordination is critical to operational stability and mission outcomes. This role ensures that all release activities are visible, controlled, and approved, governance bodies receive accurate technical insight for decision making, risk is minimised through rigorous planning and stakeholder alignment, and the customer receives predictable, transparent, and auditable release performance.

• Own end-to-end release planning and delivery across multiple mission systems and environments, including schedules, release windows, freeze periods, testing cycles, deployments, validation, and reporting.

• Lead Change and Release governance, including Chairing the CAB when required, defining and maturing CAB processes, managing emergency changes, and ensuring ASDEFCON-aligned compliance, auditability, and traceability.

• Coordinate cross-system dependencies and constraints, ensuring impacts, risks, resources, environmental limitations, and operational events are fully understood and reflected in release decisions.

• Act as the central liaison for release activities, connecting Engineering, Maintenance, Security, Help Desk, PMO, Operating Support, and external stakeholders, and providing clear communication on risks, decisions, and outcomes.

• Drive release readiness and quality, confirming testing evidence, documentation, deployment and rollback plans, operational acceptance, and linkage to approved change tickets.

• Continuously improve release performance and maturity, producing release metrics and reports, facilitating lessons learned, supporting long-term roadmaps, and identifying opportunities for automation and efficiency uplift.

What You’ll Bring to Make An Impact

• Proven experience managing releases in complex ICT environments, coordinating multiple technical teams, dependencies, and competing priorities across large backlogs and operational demands.

• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to influence at all levels and confidently chair cross-functional technical and governance forums, including CABs.

• Solid grounding in ITIL change and release management, with hands‑on experience governing structured CAB processes and high‑risk changes.

• Highly structured and detail-oriented, with strong analytical and scheduling capability and a focus on compliance, auditability, and traceability.

• Experience in secure or regulated environments (Defence, Intelligence, or similar), including familiarity with ASDEFCON governance, reporting, and audit requirements (highly desirable).

• Technically fluent and collaborative, with an engineering background or exposure to complex system dependencies and ITSM tools such as Jira, ServiceNow, or equivalent.

Don’t worry if you don’t tick all the boxes – if you meet most of them, we encourage you to submit your application. We’re most interested in your strengths, what you want to learn and how far you want to go.

This role does requires the successful applicant to be an Australian Citizen and hold an active TSPV Clearance_, accompanied by the ability to be successful for a DISA/OSA._

Diverse Team Members, Shared Values and a Common Purpose

Providing our customers with smarter solutions takes an incredible team with diversity of thought, experience and perspectives driving innovation. Inclusion is at the heart of our culture and is one of our core values. It’s about creating a workplace where everyone can do important work, feels welcome, valued, and respected, and has equal access to opportunities to thrive. Paul Chase – Chief Executive, Leidos Australia.

Leidos Australia is an equal opportunities organisation and is committed to creating a truly inclusive workplace. We welcome and encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, culturally and linguistically diverse people, people with disabilities, veterans, neurodiverse people, and people of all genders, sexualities, and age groups.

Our five Advocacy Groups (Women and Allies Network,Young Professionals, Defence & Emergency Services, Action for Accessibility and Abilities and Pride+) provide an opportunity for team members to connect and collaborate on shared interests, and work to support and celebrate our diverse community.

If you’re looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We’re not hiring followers. We’re recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We’re already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.