Change & Release Coordinator

Ness Digital Engineering; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Ness Digital Engineering seeks an experienced Change & Release Coordinator to manage end-to-end release processes across Dev, QA, Staging and Prod environments, ensuring reliable deployments through automated pipelines and governance.

You will collaborate with Development, DevOps, IT Operations and Security to orchestrate releases, enforce ITIL-compliant controls, and drive continuous improvement in release automation and environment management in a cloud/hybrid setup in Chicago.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in IT Change, Release, or Environment Management within cloud or hybrid enterprise landscapes.
• Experience with ITSM frameworks and governance; familiarity with ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, and BMC Helix.
• Excellent coordination, stakeholder management, and adherence to ITIL/DevSecOps practices during release cutovers.

Responsibilities

• Own the Release Management Lifecycle for scheduled releases, CI builds, and hotfixes across Dev, Test, Staging, and Prod.
• Lead Release Readiness reviews, Go/No-Go meetings, and post-implementation reviews (PIRs).
• Coordinate deployment cutovers and dry runs across engineering, infrastructure, database, and security teams.
• Establish rollback protocols and act as escalation point for deployment failures and pipeline blockages.

Skills

Change management

Release engineering

Automation

ITIL

Agile

DevSecOps

Education

ITIL Foundation certification

Tools

ServiceNow

Jira

Confluence

BMC Helix

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Focus: Release Engineering, Automation & Environment Management (Prod & Non-Prod)

Position Summary

We are seeking an experienced Change & Release Coordinator to manage, oversee, and optimize end-to-end change and release deployment processes across both production and non-production environments. You will bridge the gap between Development, DevOps, QA, and IT Operations to drive reliable, repeatable releases using automated deployment pipelines and strict governance framework protocols.

Key Responsibilities

Release Orchestration & Coordination

• Own the Release Management Lifecycle for scheduled software releases, continuous integration builds, and hotfixes across multi-environment landscapes (Dev, Test, Staging, Prod).
• Lead Release Readiness reviews, Go/No-Go checkpoints, Deployment Planning meetings, and post-implementation reviews (PIRs).
• Coordinate deployment cutovers and dry runs across engineering, infrastructure, database, and security teams.

Change Governance & Compliance

• Evaluate Change Requests (CRs) for risk, impact, environment dependencies, and technical readiness prior to CAB (Change Advisory Board) reviews.
• Enforce compliance with organizational change policies, audit requirements, and ITIL standards across all changes.
• Track change success/failure metrics, maintaining accurate release schedules and release documentation.

Automation & Environment Management

• Collaborate with DevOps and Release Engineers to standardize automated deployment scripts, CI/CD pipelines, and environment configuration controls.
• Drive transition strategies from manual deployment steps to fully automated pipeline deployments.
• Manage environment access, code branch cutoffs, configuration drift monitoring, and synchronization between non-production and production environments.

Incident & Risk Mitigation

• Establish standardized rollback protocols and contingency plans for high-risk changes.
• Serve as the escalation point for deployment failures, environment contention issues, or pipeline blockages during release windows.

Qualifications & Key Skills

• Experience: 5+ years of dedicated experience in IT Change, Release, or Environment Management within cloud or hybrid enterprise landscapes.
• Release Engineering & Automation: Knowledge and experience in working with team DevOps and automation work
• ITSM & Governance: Deep working knowledge of ITSM frameworks and tools (ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, BMC Helix).
• Environment Knowledge: Familiarity with managing code deployments across microservices, containers (Docker, Kubernetes), databases, and legacy platforms.
• Methodologies: Strong understanding of Agile, DevSecOps, Continuous Delivery, and ITIL methodologies (ITIL Foundation certification preferred).
• Communication: Excellent coordination, stakeholder management, and crisis control skills during critical deployment cutover windows.