Senior Director Release Management

IFS; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work opportunities

Job summary

IFS is seeking a strategic and transformation-focused Head of Release Management to modernize the release ecosystem across Product and Technology. This role will lead the shift to a data-driven, platform-enabled model with automated readiness checks and risk-based controls embedded into engineering workflows.

The successful candidate will shape long-term release strategy, define guardrails, and drive adoption of automated compliance, telemetry, and progressive deployment practices across

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software delivery, release management, DevOps, SRE, or related leadership roles.
• Proven track record modernizing release, deployment, or governance models across complex product or platform environments.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, progressive delivery, feature flags, deployment automation, policy-as-code, automated compliance, observability, and modern engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the release ecosystem strategy across Product and Technology.
• Embed release controls into developer workflows and deployment pipelines.
• Establish automated, auditable, risk-based controls including policy-as-code and automated compliance checks.
• Lead environments strategy, release intelligence, and engineering enablement across teams.
• Build and coach a transformation-focused release management function with investment cases and roadmaps.

Skills

CI/CD

Progressive delivery

Release automation

Policy-as-code

Observability

SRE principles

Stakeholder leadership

Engineering enablement

Data-driven decision making

AI-aware

Job description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job Description

We are looking for a strategic and transformation-focused Head of Release Management to modernize the release ecosystem across Product and Technology. This role will lead the shift from manual, process-heavy release governance to a modern, data-driven and platform-enabled model where release safety, compliance and operational readiness are embedded directly into engineering workflows, deployment pipelines and platform capabilities.

The successful candidate will define the long-term release strategy across multiple release types, including planned product releases, service updates, emergency and security releases, platform releases, customer onboarding releases and future AI/model releases. They will establish risk-based guardrails, policy-as-code, automated compliance checks, release risk scoring, automated evidence collection and progressive deployment controls to reduce reliance on manual approvals and governance forums.

This role will also shape environment strategy, release intelligence and engineering enablement across Product and Technology. Working closely with Platform Engineering, DevOps, Security, Product, Quality, Cloud Operations and engineering leadership, the Head of Release Management will drive the adoption of automated readiness checks, environment observability, telemetry-led insights, predictive risk management and modern deployment practices.

A key part of the role is building a release management capability that acts as an enablement and transformation function rather than a coordination gate. The role will lead, coach and develop the team, create investment cases and transformation roadmaps, and promote a culture of evidence-based decision making, shared ownership, progressive delivery and continuous improvement.

Key responsibilities include:

• Define and execute the release ecosystem strategy across Product and Technology.
• Embed release controls into developer workflows, deployment pipelines and platform capabilities.
• Establish automated, auditable and risk-based controls, including policy-as-code, automated compliance checks and release risk scoring.
• Define differentiated release models for product, service, emergency, security, platform, customer onboarding and AI/model releases.
• Lead release-led customer onboarding governance, including readiness, environment validation, support readiness and post-onboarding assurance.
• Shape AI-native release management practices for AI-generated code, agentic workflows, prompts, models and knowledge assets.
• Own or co-own environment strategy, shared environment governance, readiness, utilization and observability.
• Build release intelligence capabilities using telemetry, operational data and AI to predict deployment risks and readiness gaps.
• Drive engineering enablement by helping teams deploy and onboard customers safely, reliably and independently.
• Lead and develop a release management function focused on transformation, automation and continuous improvement.
• Build investment cases and transformation roadmaps to secure the tooling, automation, telemetry and platform capabilities required to modernize release management.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software delivery, release management, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, cloud operations, engineering program management or engineering leadership.
• Proven track record modernizing release, deployment or operational governance models across complex product, platform or service environments.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, progressive delivery, feature flags, deployment automation, policy-as-code, automated compliance, observability, SRE principles and modern engineering practices.
• Experience defining release approaches for planned, emergency, security, platform, service and out-of-band releases.
• Experience with environment strategy, shared environment governance, test environment utilization, customer onboarding readiness, environment observability and episodic or on-demand environments.
• Experience improving customer onboarding, production readiness, service transition or customer activation processes in a cloud, SaaS or enterprise software environment.
• Ability to use data, telemetry, dashboards, predictive insights or AI to improve release risk management, deployment reliability and engineering productivity.
• Experience building investment cases and transformation proposals to secure funding for tooling, automation, platform capability, environment improvements or operating model change.
• Strong stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence Product, Engineering, Platform, Security, Operations, Support and executive stakeholders.
• Proven change management capability, with experience moving teams from traditional governance models to modern, platform-enabled and evidence-based release practices.
• Strategic transformation leader who is a systems thinker, data-driven decision maker, AI-aware, security-conscious, and passionate about engineering enablement.

Additional Information

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.