CI/CD & Release Automation Lead

Willis Towers Watson; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Willis Towers Watson seeks a talented SaaS/DevOps Release Manager to lead release management across multiple product teams, focusing on automated, repeatable delivery. You will drive CI/CD, tooling integration, and progressive delivery practices in a security-conscious environment.

The role requires collaboration with product management, engineering, and governance to establish modern release patterns and metrics, enabling faster, safer software releases across our SaaS platforms.

Qualifications

• Demonstratable experience (at least 3 years) in release management for a SaaS organisation releasing new features and updates on a frequent 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.

Responsibilities

• Lead release management governance including quality gates, automated checks, and readiness criteria.
• Collaborate with security/compliance teams to minimise manual intervention through automation.
• Coordinate risks, dependencies, and release decisions across product teams.
• Drive CI/CD adoption, release orchestration, and infrastructure automation across teams.
• Embed release processes into delivery workflows (pipelines, GitOps, environment promotion).
• Identify opportunities to replace manual release activities with automated, repeatable processes.
• Support progressive delivery techniques (feature flags, canary, blue/green where applicable).
• Collaborate with platform/engineering teams to align DevOps tooling and standards.
• Define and track DORA-style metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR).
• Coach teams on DevOps practices and automation; bridge engineering, architecture, governance.

Skills

Release management

Agile & SDLC

DevOps practices

CI/CD pipelines

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

ServiceNow

BMC

Infrastructure as code

OpenTofu

Cloud-native SaaS

Observability & metrics

Environment management

Progressive delivery

Automation

Stakeholder management

Coaching & capability building

Tools

ServiceNow

BMC

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

OpenTofu

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.

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

(ICT_TECH TD_2026_27R)