Release Train Engineer

Electric Reliability Council of Texas; Taylor (TX); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Retirement plan

Job summary

Electric Reliability Council of Texas in Taylor, TX is seeking a Release Train Engineer to facilitate product release planning and govern end-to-end release lifecycles across ERCOT applications, AI, and data platforms.

You will coordinate planning sessions, backlog management, and roadmaps across Agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery teams, owning the production release calendar and NERC CIP change governance.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in Release Management or Delivery governance.
• Experience coordinating cross-team release activities.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field; ITIL/SAFe preferred.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate release planning across Agile, waterfall, and hybrid teams.
• Maintain production release calendar and change governance per NERC CIP.
• Coordinate CAB activities and ensure audit trails for releases.
• Generate release metrics and dashboards (Power BI).

Skills

Release management

Program delivery

Project management

Governance

Agile & Waterfall

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business, CS, IS or related

Tools

ServiceNow

Jira

Power BI

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

Docker

Kubernetes

Azure

Job description

JOB SUMMARY

Facilitate product release planning and governs the end-to-end release lifecycle across ERCOT applications, AI, and data platform portfolio. Coordinates release planning sessions, backlog management, and product roadmap facilitation across Agile sprint, waterfall, and hybrid delivery teams. Owns the production release calendar, NERC CIP change governance, ServiceNow change management workflows, and program-level delivery metrics reporting. Serves as the connective tissue between delivery teams, business stakeholders, and governance bodies — ensuring every release is planned, approved, measured, and continuously improved.

JOB DUTIES

Applies knowledge of release planning, change management, and delivery governance principles to facilitate structured, compliant, and predictable software releases across ERCOT’s application and data platform portfolio. Follows established release management processes and procedures to coordinate deployment activities across Agile sprint, waterfall, and hybrid delivery teams; ensures cross-functional alignment on release scope, schedule, and readiness. Creates, reviews, and manages IT change records in ServiceNow in accordance with ERCOT change management standards; coordinates Change Advisory Board activities and ensures all releases meet NERC CIP change governance requirements prior to production promotion. Maintains the production release calendar and facilitates release planning meetings, backlog grooming sessions, and deployment readiness reviews to ensure consistent, predictable release cadence across all delivery tracks. Contributes to the generation and distribution of release metrics, status reports, and delivery dashboards supporting program-level visibility and continuous improvement of the release management function.

ADDITIONAL JOB DUTIES — BY LEVEL

Level 2 — Release Train Engineer

• Release Planning Facilitation — Facilitate product release planning sessions across Agile sprint teams, waterfall project tracks, and hybrid delivery programs; coordinate cross-team capacity, feature scoping, dependency mapping, and risk identification for each planning cycle.
• Product Roadmap Facilitation — Facilitate product roadmap planning sessions with Product Managers, architects, and business stakeholders; maintain roadmap visibility in Jira; communicate how planned features and releases map to organizational priorities and delivery capacity.
• Waterfall Project Release Planning — Own release planning for waterfall project tracks: milestone definition, phase gate sequencing, Gantt-style schedule development, resource coordination, and formal release approval planning.
• Agile Sprint & Iteration Release Planning — Facilitate sprint and iteration release planning for Agile teams; coordinate sprint-to-release promotion sequencing, release branch readiness, and Definition of Done alignment across development, QA, and release engineering.
• Backlog Management & Grooming Facilitation — Facilitate product and program backlog grooming and refinement sessions; ensure epics, features, and stories are sufficiently defined, estimated, dependency-mapped, and ready for sprint or project execution.
• ServiceNow Change Record Management — Create, review, and manage change records in ServiceNow; ensure change classification, approval routing, and documentation meet ITSM governance and NERC CIP audit standards.
• Release Calendar Coordination — Maintain the production release calendar; coordinate deployment windows across delivery teams, infrastructure, and change management; communicate release schedule and risk to all stakeholders.
• Release Metrics & DORA Data Collection — Capture and report release frequency, change volume by type, change success rates, PI predictability, and sprint velocity; contribute to DORA and ITC metric dashboards in Power BI.
• CAB Meeting Facilitation — Facilitate Change Advisory Board meetings; prepare and distribute meeting agendas, capture decisions and action items, and ensure CAB notes are documented and distributed to stakeholders.
• Deployment Readiness Tracking — Track release deliverables, security compliance checks, and functional test approvals; confirm production readiness criteria are met before each deployment window.
• Stakeholder Communication — Coordinate release communication across development, QA, operations, and business teams; ensure all stakeholders have timely, accurate information on release scope, schedule, and risk.
• Documentation & Process Standards — Update and maintain release management process documentation, runbooks, and deployment checklists following applicable ERCOT standards.

Sr. Release Train Engineer (All Level 2 duties plus:)

• Hybrid Delivery Coordination — Coordinate release planning and deployment sequencing across teams operating under Agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery methodologies; synchronize cross-team releases when shared dependencies exist.
• Program-Level Release Governance — Enforce release readiness criteria before each deployment window; validate test completion evidence, environment stability, stakeholder approvals, and CAB authorization; serve as program-level production gate keeper.
• NERC CIP & ITSM Change Governance — Ensure all releases comply with NERC CIP change management requirements; coordinate with the CAB, enforce change classification standards, and maintain complete audit trails for all production promotions.
• Emergency & Expedited Change Coordination — Facilitate emergency and expedited change management processes; coordinate expedited CAB review, risk assessment documentation, stakeholder notification, and post-implementation review.
• IT & Change Metrics Reporting — Track and report IT change metrics including change volume by type, change success rate, unauthorized change incidents, CAB throughput, change-to-incident correlation, and SLA compliance; publish via ServiceNow and Power BI.
• SDLC Metrics & Delivery Throughput Analysis — Measure program-level SDLC metrics including throughput, cycle time, lead time, WIP load, and bottleneck patterns; publish actionable insights to delivery leadership.
• Release Health Dashboards — Design and maintain executive-facing dashboards in Power BI reflecting deployment status, release calendar adherence, milestone completion rates, change success rates, and DORA metric trends.
• Dependency & Risk Register Management — Maintain a product dependency map and risk register; facilitate cross-team dependency resolution and ensure all risks are visible, owned, and actively mitigated.
• Continuous Improvement Leadership — Lead retrospectives and release planning improvement sessions; identify and drive elimination of waste, handoff delays, and approval bottlenecks; track improvement items to completion.
• Waterfall Phase Gate & Milestone Governance — Coordinate formal waterfall phase gate reviews; ensure gate entry/exit criteria are met, required artifacts are complete, and stakeholder sign-offs are documented and archived.

TECHNOLOGY STACK

• CI/CD & Pipelines: GitHub Actions, Jenkins
• Container & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift (Private Cloud), Helm
• Infrastructure as Code: Ansible, Terraform
• Cloud Platforms: Azure, Private Cloud (OpenShift / On-Premises)
• Observability & Monitoring: Splunk
• ITSM & Agile Tooling: ServiceNow, Jira
• Data & Analytics: Databricks, Power BI, SQL, Oracle DB, PostgreSQL
• Scripting & Languages: Python, PowerShell
• Artifact Management: Artifactory
• AI & Automation: LLM-integrated pipelines, AI-assisted code review, GitHub Copilot

EXPERIENCE

• Level 2: 2+ years in Release Management, Program Delivery, or Project Management with direct accountability for production release governance across Agile and waterfall methodologies.
• Senior Level: 5+ years in Release Management, Program Delivery, or Project Management with direct accountability for production release governance across Agile and waterfall methodologies.
• Lead Level: 8+ years in Release Management, Program Delivery, or Project Management with direct accountability for production release governance across Agile and waterfall methodologies.

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s Degree : Business, Computer Science, Information Systems or related field (Required) or a combination of education and experience that provides equivalent knowledge to a major in such fields is required

CERTIFICATION

ITIL Foundation v4 (Preferred) | SAFe Release Train Engineer RTE Cloud Certification Azure (Preferred) | Certified Scrum Master CSM (Preferred)

WORK LOCATION

Taylor, TX Hybrid 2 days a week

EXPECTED Salary Range

$120,000 - $165,000

EMPLOYMENT TERMS

The foregoing description reflects the minimum qualifications and the essential functions of the position that must be performed proficiently with or without reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities. It is not an exhaustive list of the duties expected to be performed, and management may, at its discretion, revise or require that other or different tasks be performed as assigned. This job description is not intended to create a contract of employment with ERCOT. Both ERCOT and the employee may exercise their employment-at-will rights at any time.

EMPLOYMENT AND BENEFITS

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to 27 million Texas customers - representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 54,100 miles of transmission lines and 1,250 generating units. ERCOT also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for 8 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature. ERCOT’s members include consumers, cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities (transmission and distribution providers,) and municipal-owned electric utilities. ERCOT offers an excellent benefits package, which includes health, dental, vision, life insurance, long/short-term disability insurance, long-term care insurance, Section 125 Flexible Spending Account, and a Retirement Savings Plan. The medical, dental, vision, and quality-of-life benefits offered by ERCOT are second to none. Full-time employees are eligible to enroll in benefits on the first of the month following the date of hire. Additionally, 401(k) plans are available to help employees plan for the future.

INTERNSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

The ERCOT Internship Program provides college students the opportunity to develop their skills in a professional work environment. Each intern will receive unique projects and assignments that aim to solve real challenges facing the electric industry. ERCOT internships provide professional learning experiences that offer meaningful, practical work related to each student’s desired career path. Eligible candidates should be enrolled in an academic bachelors or post graduate degree program maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher.

The ERCOT Engineer Development Program (EDP) is a 12- to 16-month, self-paced program geared toward entry-level engineers looking to start a career in the power industry. Through the program, an EDP Engineer receives one-on-one mentoring, specialized training, and exposure to the work performed by each of the engineering groups at ERCOT. The program allows engineers to develop the fundamental skills necessary to reach their full potential while gaining an understanding of the types of engineering work ERCOT has to offer. EDP management supports participants each step of the way as they progress through the program. Upon completion, graduates are placed as full-time engineers within one of ERCOT’s engineering groups.

The GMS Development Program (GDP) is designed to provide entry-level and early career professionals with the skills necessary to become successful Power System and Computer Engineers. The program, which is based in ERCOT’s Grid and Market Solutions (GMS) Department, will provide experience in day-to-day work and instruction in the fundamentals of electric power systems engineering, grid and market applications, software programming, and IT service and operations management. The GDP offers one‑on‑one mentoring, training, field trips, and special assignments. These assignments allow GDP engineers to become knowledgeable and familiar with the various business areas at ERCOT. The GMS leadership team prepares GDP engineers for a future career at ERCOT in powersystems and computer engineering. The System Operator Development Program (ODP) is intended to combine real‑time daily operations in an exciting work setting to prepare participants with the vital skills necessary to be successful in such a critical position — providing 24x7x365 on‑demand support to manage the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers. If you are new to the industry, this program introduces you to the Bulk Electric System by combining introductory courses with the NERC Certification Exam Preparation Program in preparation to pass the NERC Certification Exam.

EEO AND INCLUSION STATEMENT

ERCOT is firmly committed to equal employment for all qualified persons without regard to race, sex, medical condition, religion, age, creed, national origin, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, ancestry, veteran status, genetic information or any other protected category under federal, state or local law.