CI/CD & Release Automation Lead

WTW; Reigate; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

WTW Insurance Consulting and Technology is seeking a SaaS / DevOps Release Manager to lead modern release practices across multiple product teams. You will drive CI/CD adoption, automation, and governance, working with engineering, product, and security to deliver reliable release plans.

You will coach teams, reduce manual effort, and promote progressive delivery approaches such as feature flags and canary deployments.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of release management experience in SaaS (frequent updates).
• Strong knowledge of Agile, SDLC and DevOps practices.
• Experience with modern release tooling (ServiceNow, BMC).
• Experience managing multiple stakeholders and cross-functional teams.
• Interest in improving release practices with automation and data-led insights.

Responsibilities

• Lead release management activities: planning, scheduling, and communications.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and security to align release plans.
• Embed release processes into delivery workflows (CI/CD, GitOps).
• Promote automated, repeatable release activities and feature flags.
• Define and track release metrics and continuous improvement.

Skills

Release management

Agile/SDLC/DevOps

CI/CD pipelines

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Automation

DevOps practices

Stakeholder management

Coaching teams

Infrastructure as code

Tools

ServiceNow

BMC

OpenTofu

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Job description

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