Change Lead

Chartwells Independent; Birmingham; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

Compass Group UK & Ireland, Digital & Technology, seeks an experienced Change Lead to own the change enablement practice across the organisation. You will protect service stability while enabling faster engineering delivery with risk-based governance and clear supporting evidence.

You will coordinate across Engineering, Platform, SRE, QA, Product, Infrastructure & Cloud, Service Transition and the Service Desk to ensure changes are properly assessed, approved, scheduled, communicated,

Qualifications

• Experience with ITIL 4 change enablement and release governance in a complex tech environment.
• Proficient in CI/CD, automation, and risk-based controls.

Responsibilities

• Own change governance, CAB cadence, emergency change controls and standard change models.
• Ensure change records include risk, impact, implementation, communication, backout and validation evidence.
• Partner with Engineering, Platform and QA to embed quality gates and release evidence into CI/CD and deployment workflows.
• Develop proportionate controls differentiating low-risk standard changes from higher-risk changes.
• Coordinate release calendars and change windows across product, infrastructure and service teams.
• Monitor change success, failed/unauthorised changes and post-change actions.
• Support automation of change records, approval workflows and deployment evidence.
• Produce change management information, performance reporting and risk commentary for governance.
• Maintain an improvement backlog focused on automation and governance simplification.

Skills

ITIL 4 change enablement

Release governance

Stakeholder management

Decision facilitation

Data-driven measurement

Risk-based controls

Tools

CI/CD

Automation tooling

Job description

Change Lead

Compass Group UK & Ireland | Digital & Technology

The opportunity

We are looking for an experienced Change Lead to take ownership of the change enablement practice across Compass Group UK & Ireland Digital & Technology.

This is a key leadership role within Service Operations, responsible for protecting service stability while enabling teams to deliver change safely and efficiently. You will establish proportionate, risk-based governance that supports faster engineering delivery without compromising operational control.

Working across Engineering, Platform, SRE, QA, Product, Infrastructure & Cloud, Service Transition and the Service Desk, you will ensure changes are properly assessed, approved, scheduled, communicated, implemented and reviewed with clear supporting evidence.

What you'll be doing

• Owning change governance, policy, CAB cadence, emergency change controls and standard change models.
• Ensuring change records include clear risk, impact, implementation, communication, backout and validation evidence.
• Partnering with Engineering, Platform and QA teams to embed quality gates and release evidence into CI/CD and deployment workflows.
• Developing proportionate controls that differentiate low-risk standard changes from higher-risk normal and emergency changes.
• Coordinating release calendars and change windows across product, infrastructure and service teams.
• Monitoring change success, failed changes, unauthorised changes and post-change review actions.
• Supporting the automation of change records, approval workflows and deployment evidence.
• Producing meaningful change management information, performance reporting and risk commentary for operational and executive governance.
• Maintaining an improvement backlog focused on automation, process effectiveness and governance simplification.

What we're looking for:

• Strong experience of ITIL 4 change enablement and release governance within a complex technology environment.
• A good understanding of modern engineering delivery, CI/CD, automation and risk-based controls.
• Experience managing CAB governance, emergency changes, standard change models and post-change reviews.
• The ability to balance delivery speed, service stability, governance requirements and commercial risk.
• Excellent stakeholder management and decision-facilitation skills.
• Strong written communication, reporting and evidence-management capabilities.
• A data-led approach to measuring change outcomes and driving continuous improvement.
• The confidence to influence technical and senior stakeholders across multiple teams.

What success will look like

You will improve the effectiveness and consistency of change enablement across Digital & Technology by:

• Improving change success rates and reducing failed changes.
• Reducing emergency and unauthorised change volumes.
• Strengthening release evidence and post-change review completion.
• Improving approval times through proportionate, risk-based governance.
• Establishing clear performance dashboards, trend reporting and improvement actions.
• Identifying opportunities to automate change workflows and deployment evidence.

Your first 90 days

Your initial focus will include reviewing the current change process and CAB effectiveness, identifying pain points and establishing a clear performance baseline. You will define standard change candidates, strengthen the risk-based approval approach and align release evidence expectations across Engineering, QA, SRE and Service Transition.

You will also identify opportunities to improve automation within ITSM tooling and deployment evidence capture.

Why join Compass Group UK & Ireland?

This is an opportunity to shape a critical technology practice within a large, complex and evolving organisation. You will work at the centre of Digital & Technology, influencing how change is governed and delivered while helping teams move faster, reduce risk and protect the services our businesses depend on.

If you are an experienced change enablement professional who combines strong governance expertise with a practical understanding of modern engineering delivery, we would love to hear from you.