Release Management Lead / VP in London

Day rate of £750 a day outside IR35. Opportunity to work on a greenfield implementation.

About Our Client: The organisation is a well-established player in the Financial Services industry, with a focus on delivering innovative technology solutions.

Job Description:

• Strategic Release Planning & Execution: Own and manage the enterprise-wide release calendar, ensuring alignment with business priorities, regulatory deadlines, and change windows. Lead the planning and execution of major, minor, and emergency releases across multiple platforms and business units. Partner with Product Managers and Engineering Leads to plan, schedule, and coordinate major releases, patches, and hotfixes across multiple interconnected product teams. Require, review, and approve detailed Rollback Plans and communication strategies for every critical release, ensuring swift recovery in the event of failure. Lead regular coordination meetings with development, QA, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and business teams to ensure release readiness, resolve scheduling conflicts and pre-empt deployment risks. Oversee release bridges and provide leadership during out-of-hours deployments and critical cutovers. Manage and lead post live release periods, ensuring issues are captured, prioritised, communicated and plans for remediation are put into place.
• Governance & Compliance: Ensure all release activities comply with internal controls, audit requirements, and regulatory standards (e.g., SOX, PCI-DSS, GDPR, PRA/FCA). Maintain comprehensive release documentation, including approvals, risk assessments, rollback plans, and post-implementation reviews. Serve as a key point of contact for internal and external audits related to release governance. Enforce segregation of duties, change control policies, and traceability across the release lifecycle.
• Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement: Act as a central point of coordination for enterprise releases, engaging senior stakeholders, business sponsors, and technology leaders. Chair Release Governance Boards and contribute to Change Advisory Boards (CABs). Provide regular reporting on release performance, risks, and compliance metrics to executive leadership.
• Continuous Improvement & Tooling: Drive continuous improvement of release processes, automation, and tooling to support Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD practices. Evaluate and support the implementation of enterprise release management tools and frameworks. Foster a culture of accountability, quality, and operational excellence across delivery teams.
• Miscellaneous: Developing skills pertinent to role. Undertaking other reasonable tasks at the discretion of the Head of Section and Group.

The Successful Applicant: A successful Release Management Lead / VP should have:

• Extensive experience in release management, IT operations, or technology delivery, preferably in the banking or financial services sector.
• Proven experience managing enterprise-scale releases in a regulated financial services environment.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL, release governance, and change management frameworks.
• Experience with ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow), CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, Azure DevOps), and enterprise architecture platforms.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Understanding of regulatory and compliance standards relevant to banking (e.g., DORA, SOX, PCI-DSS, GDPR).
• Experience with scaled agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe).
• Knowledge of risk management, audit controls, and change governance in regulated environments in the banking sector.
• Experience with core banking systems, digital banking platforms, or financial transaction processing.

What's on Offer: Competitive daily rate of £778 a day inside IR35. Temporary role offering flexibility and project-based engagement. Opportunity to work within a reputable organisation in the Financial Services industry. London-based role with exposure to innovative technology projects.

If you are ready to take the next step in your career as a Release Management Lead / VP, apply today to join a leading team in the Financial Services sector.