Head of Release Management

The Head of Release Management will oversee and coordinate the release processes for the technology department within the financial services industry. This role is based in London and requires strong expertise in managing technology releases effectively.

Client Details

The company is a well-established organisation within the financial services industry with a large and professional team.

Description

Strategy & Governance

Define the multi-year roadmap and develop and implement a Release Management strategy aligned with business objectives, technology roadmap, and regulatory requirements.

Design, hire, and manage the structure of the team, leveraging both internal staff and external vendors, optimising the balance between cost-efficiency and delivery speed.

Align with business objectives, regulatory requirements, and technology roadmaps.

Establish governance frameworks, policies, and standards for release planning, environment lifecycle, and compliance.

Define and maintain audit-ready controls for release management.

Partner with other technology teams to drive DevOps adoption, automation, and continuous delivery practices.

Release Management

Own the release calendar, governance framework, and readiness checkpoints.

Oversee planning, coordination, and execution of releases across multiple platforms.

Establish Quality metrics (e.g DORA) and KPIs (e.g., release quality, deployment frequency, change success rate, MTTR) and monitor performance.

Serve as the primary point of contact for internal and external auditors regarding the release management process, providing evidence of control adherence, automated audit trails, and policy enforcement.

Environment Management

Define and enforce environment lifecycle policies (provisioning, refresh, decommissioning).

Ensure non-production environments are available, stable, and compliant with security and data privacy standards.

Oversee data refresh and masking processes to meet GDPR and regulatory requirements.

Prevent configuration drift and maintain parity with production where required.

Governance & Compliance

Ensure compliance with Digital Operational Resilience Act ICT change management, ISO 27001, and internal audit requirements.

Maintain documentation and evidence for regulatory inspections and audits.

Conduct risk assessments for releases and environment changes; implement mitigation plans.

Stakeholder Engagement

Act as the primary escalation point for release and environment issues.

Engage with business leaders, product owners, and technology teams to align priorities and resolve conflicts.

Manage relationships with third-party vendors and service providers for environment and release services.

Team Leadership

Build and lead a high-performing team of release managers, environment coordinators, and analysts.

Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Develop capability through training, mentoring, and succession planning.

Miscellaneous

Developing skills pertinent to role.

Undertaking other reasonable tasks at the discretion of the Head of Section and Gro

Profile

A successful Head of Release Management should have:

• Domain Knowledge: Extensive experience in release and environment management within banking or regulated industries managing a global, enterprise-level function and proven ability to manage complex dependencies across multiple programmes with excellent stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills.
• Financial Sector Experience: Deep experience in a senior technology leadership role within a highly regulated financial services institution, demonstrating fluency with banking compliance and audit cycles.
• Leadership: Proven ability to drive large-scale cultural and technological change across diverse and sometimes conflicting product and operations teams.
• Technical Acumen: Strategic understanding of modern software architecture (microservices), CI/CD toolchains, DevOps principles, and large-scale environment virtualisation/containerisation technologies (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Regulatory Knowledge: Understanding of compliance requirements related to IT Release or Change Management practices, such as DORA, FCA/PRA, ISO standards).
• Methodologies: Experience with scaled agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe) and other SDLC methodologies

Job Offer

• Daily rate of £869 a day inside IR35.
• Opportunity to contribute to high-impact projects within the financial services industry.
• Be part of a professional and supportive technology team.

If you are ready to take on this exciting opportunity as Head of Release Management, apply now to join a leading organisation in the financial services sector in London