Change and Release Practice Manager at malomatia in Qatar, Qatar

To support effective operation, coordination, control, and continual improvement of Change Enablement and Release Management across in-scope services. The role helps ensure that changes and releases are properly recorded, assessed, authorized, scheduled, communicated, deployed, validated, supported, and closed in accordance with approved procedures. Working under the guidance of the Practice Manager or Senior Consultant, the role contributes to service stability, business continuity, release quality, auditability, and timely delivery across traditional, cloud, Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD environments.

To support effective operation, coordination, control, and continual improvement of Change Enablement and Release Management across in-scope services. The role helps ensure that changes and releases are properly recorded, assessed, authorized, scheduled, communicated, deployed, validated, supported, and closed in accordance with approved procedures. Working under the guidance of the Practice Manager or Senior Consultant, the role contributes to service stability, business continuity, release quality, auditability, and timely delivery across traditional, cloud, Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD environments.

Responsibilities

• Support the day-to-day administration and consistent execution of Change Enablement, Release Management, and related Deployment Management procedures, templates, workflows, and controls. • Review Requests for Change (RFCs) and release records for completeness, correct categorization and priority, business and technical justification, risk and impact information, affected services or configuration items, dependencies, implementation plans, testing evidence, rollback plans, and required approvals. • Coordinate standard, normal, emergency, and major changes in accordance with approved change models and escalation paths, and promptly escalate incomplete, high-risk, conflicting, or unauthorized requests. • Prepare Change Advisory Board, Emergency Change Advisory Board, release-readiness, and go/no-go meeting packs; schedule meetings, record decisions and conditions, issue minutes, and track actions to closure. • Maintain the forward schedule of change and the integrated release calendar, checking deployment windows, maintenance periods, freeze or blackout dates, business events, resource constraints, dependencies, and schedule conflicts. • Support release planning and coordination across build, packaging, testing, user acceptance, training, pre-production, production deployment, validation, early-life support, handover, and closure. • Collect and validate readiness evidence, including approved scope, test results, defect status, security and compliance clearances, configuration baselines, operational acceptance, support readiness, communications, monitoring, deployment checklists, and recovery arrangements. • Confirm that implementation, deployment, validation, rollback or back-out, contingency, communication, and recovery plans are documented, approved, and communicated before implementation. • Monitor approved changes and releases during implementation, maintain status and decision records, coordinate involved teams, and escalate delays, failures, deviations, or emerging service risks. • Support timely stakeholder communications before, during, and after changes and releases, covering expected impact, outages, progress, delays, success, rollback, restoration, and closure. • Ensure change and release records, approvals, evidence, deployment logs, configuration updates, knowledge articles, operational documents, and closure information are accurate, traceable, current, and retained in the authorized toolset. • Assist with post-implementation reviews and release retrospectives for failed, emergency, repeated, high-impact, or high-risk changes; document lessons learned and track corrective and preventive actions. • Produce regular operational reports and dashboards covering change success, failed and emergency changes, schedule adherence, approval cycle time, release frequency, rollback, post-release incidents, outstanding actions, and data-quality exceptions. • Coordinate supplier and third-party changes and releases, confirming alignment with contractual controls, maintenance windows, evidence requirements, service levels, and customer communications. • Support Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, cloud, infrastructure-as-code, and automated deployment activities while ensuring required approvals, traceability, security, segregation of duties, and operational-readiness controls are followed. • Maintain practice documents, work instructions, change models, standard-change records, calendars, checklists, communication templates, and knowledge content under document-control requirements. • Assist with record-quality reviews, process compliance checks, audit evidence preparation, and follow-up of identified gaps or corrective actions. • Identify recurring delays, control gaps, data-quality issues, avoidable manual work, and automation opportunities, and contribute to practical continual-improvement initiatives.

Qualifications

Required Education, Knowledge, and Certifications: • Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, SW engineering, engineering, information systems, or a related discipline. • ITIL 4 Foundation certification is required; advanced ITIL 4 knowledge or relevant practice qualifications in Change Enablement, Release Management, Deployment Management, Service Configuration Management, Create, Deliver and Support, High-Velocity IT, or Direct, Plan and Improve are strongly preferred. • Professional certification or formal training in DevOps, SAFe, Agile, Azure DevOps, cloud platforms, Site Reliability Engineering, SIAM, COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, Lean Six Sigma, project management, risk management, information security, or business continuity is advantageous. • Strong knowledge of IT service-management principles, service value systems, value streams, service transition, software and infrastructure delivery lifecycles, operational readiness, service reliability, customer experience, risk management, and continual improvement. • Good understanding of governance, internal control, segregation-of-duties, information security, privacy, regulatory notification, audit evidence, contractual obligations, service levels, and supplier-governance requirements. • Knowledge of modern delivery patterns including cloud, containers, microservices, infrastructure-as-code, continuous integration, continuous delivery, progressive delivery, automated testing, and deployment orchestration. • Knowledge of service-level agreements, operational-level agreements, underpinning contracts, experience-level agreement, release policies, maintenance windows, business calendars, and customer-specific change controls.

Required Hard Skills: • Working knowledge of Change Enablement, Release Management, and Deployment Management lifecycles, roles, controls, approvals, escalation paths, and record requirements. • Ability to review RFCs and release records, identify missing information, assess basic risk and impact, verify dependencies, and follow approved authorization and scheduling procedures. • Practical capability in CAB administration, forward-schedule maintenance, release-calendar coordination, meeting documentation, decision tracking, and action’s follow-up. • Ability to coordinate release readiness, deployment checklists, testing evidence, operational acceptance, communication, rollback, early-life support, handover, and closure activities. • Working knowledge of enterprise ITSM platforms and delivery tools such as ServiceNow, BMC, Micro Focus, Jira, Azure DevOps, Git, Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions, or equivalent solutions. • Basic understanding of application, infrastructure, cloud, network, cybersecurity, database, middleware, web, mobile, container, and microservice delivery environments. • Understanding configuration-management and CMDB concepts, service and configuration-item relationships, versioning, building artifacts, deployment packages, and release traceability. • Ability to prepare operational reports, dashboards, data-quality checks, trend summaries, management presentations, and auditable supporting evidence. • Strong documentation skills covering procedures, change and release records, minutes, calendars, checklists, communications, work instructions, knowledge articles, and action logs.

Required Soft Skills: • Clear verbal and written communication with technical teams, service managers, customers, and suppliers. • Good coordination, facilitation, follow-up, and stakeholder-management skills across multiple teams and concurrent activities. • Strong planning, prioritization, organizational discipline, and ability to manage time-sensitive work and competing deadlines. • Analytical thinking and attention to detail when reviewing records, evidence, schedules, risks, dependencies, and implementation status. • Ability to work collaboratively, ask appropriate questions, escalate concerns promptly, and follow decisions through to closure. • Ability to explain technical or operational information in a clear, structured, and audience-appropriate manner.

Behavioral: • Demonstrates accountability, reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and consistent adherence to approved procedures. • Maintains a calm, structured, and service-focused approach during high-risk implementations, emergency changes, failed deployments, or time-sensitive decisions. • Balances delivery urgency with service protection, customer impact, security, compliance, and operational resilience. • Shows initiative, curiosity, willingness to learn, and openness to coaching, feedback, automation, and modern delivery practices. • Promotes collaboration, transparency, knowledge sharing, evidence-based decisions, and a no-blame learning culture. • Persists in closing actions, correcting record-quality issues, and ensuring that lessons learned are implemented.

Experience: • 4–6 years of relevant experience in IT service management, Change Enablement, Release Management, Deployment Management, service transition, DevOps support, or a comparable function. • At least 2 years of practical experience coordinating changes, releases, deployment activities, CAB administration, operational readiness, or service-transition deliverables. • Experience using enterprise ITSM, work-management, source-control, or CI/CD platforms to maintain records, approvals, schedules, evidence, dashboards, or deployment status. • Experience working with cross-functional application, infrastructure, cloud, operations, security, testing, project, customer, and supplier teams. • Exposure to Agile, DevOps, cloud, automated deployment, or high-velocity environments where delivery speed must be balanced with service protection and control. • Experience supporting audits, compliance checks, post-implementation reviews, reporting, or continual-improvement activities is advantageous.