Director of Change Management: Gateway & Satellite Operations

AST SpaceMobile; Lanham (MD); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

AST SpaceMobile is seeking a Director of Change Management to govern changes across Gateway and Satellite domains, ensuring high-availability and non-disruptive deployments. You will chair the CAB, set change policies, and lead end-to-end change lifecycle from intake to post-implementation review.

The role requires 15+ years in telecom or network operations with change/release leadership and ITIL-aligned practices. Expect cross-functional collaboration and travel to support production networks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Master’s degree in Engineering Management, Business Administration, or a related discipline preferred; ITIL certification (Change/Release Management) strongly preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in telecommunications, satellite communications, or network operations, including significant experience owning change or release management.
• At least 5+ years leading change management, CAB governance, or operational readiness functions in a complex, mission-critical environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, governance, and continuous improvement of the enterprise change management process spanning Gateway and Satellite/Payload domains.
• Chair the Change Advisory Board (CAB), facilitating cross-domain review, risk assessment, and Go/No-Go authorization for all normal, standard, and emergency changes.
• Establish and enforce change policies, risk-classification criteria, maintenance windows, and rollback/back-out requirements to safeguard network availability, with all changes recorded and managed in Jira in line with the FCAPS operations standard.
• Own the forward schedule of change, coordinating gateway, RAN, satellite, and payload changes to prevent conflicts and minimize customer-facing service impact.
• Provide final Go/No-Go authorization for changes based on readiness, risk, blast radius, and rollback assurance across Gateway and Satellite domains.
• Ensure repeatability, traceability, and auditability of all change records, approvals, and post-implementation reviews.
• Lead post-implementation reviews and root-cause analysis of failed or rolled-back changes, driving corrective actions and measurable improvement in change success rate.
• Collaborate with Service Delivery, Service Assurance, Network and Satellite Operations, and R&D to align change readiness, validation evidence, and deployment sequencing — including gating changes on Golden Beam Acceptance outcomes where service beams are affected.
• Prevent unauthorized, high-risk, or insufficiently planned changes from reaching the production network.
• Define and report change management KPIs — change success rate, change-related incidents, emergency-change ratio, and schedule adherence — to executive stakeholders.
• Build, lead, and mentor the change management team, promoting a disciplined change culture that positions change control as a critical safeguard of network availability

Skills

Leadership

Decision making

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Attention to detail

Prioritization

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Systems Engineering, or related field

Master’s degree preferred; ITIL certification strongly preferred

Tools

ServiceNow

Jira Service Management

CMDB

Job description

AST SpaceMobile is seeking a Director of Change Management to govern changes across Gateway and Satellite domains, ensuring high-availability and non-disruptive deployments. You will chair the CAB, set change policies, and lead end-to-end change lifecycle from intake to post-implementation review.

The role requires 15+ years in telecom or network operations with change/release leadership and ITIL-aligned practices. Expect cross-functional collaboration and travel to support production networks.