We seek an experienced Service Transition & Release Manager to own end-to-end release governance and service transition across critical banking systems. The role integrates ITIL change and release practices, technical release management, and CMDB stewardship to enable predictable, safe, compliant, and auditable go-lives. You will partner with Engineering, Product, Architecture, QA, Security, Operations, and Business teams, while uplifting release maturity bank-wide. This position acts as the bank’s release governance authority—ensuring only fully validated, compliant, and risk-cleared changes move to production.

1. Release Planning & End-to-End Ownership
·       Own the full release lifecycle—from intake and planning to execution, validation, and closure—serving as the release approval authority.
·       Shape and manage release/change records proactively, aligned to product and engineering pipelines.
·       Maintain the release calendar, forward schedule of change, and blackout windows.
·       Ensure complete records (scope, dependencies, approvals, evidence, rollback).
·       Serve as the release gatekeeper with approval authority to proceed or block based on readiness and risk.
2. Technical Impact Analysis & Environment Readiness
·       Develop strong understanding of architectures, integration patterns, data flows, and dependencies.
·       Manage sequencing, conflict prevention, environment readiness, and deployment windows.
·       Act as the final checkpoint for technical impact and readiness before approval.
·       Align execution with CI/CD practices and non-functional readiness (performance, resilience, observability).
3. Service Transition & Operational Readiness
·       Execute Service Transition for major/high-risk changes with clear acceptance criteria.
·       Ensure support models, runbooks, DR/rollback plans, and warranty periods are in place.
·       Own operational readiness sign-off covering monitoring, logging, alerting, and access controls.
4. CMDB Ownership & Configuration Governance
·       Serve as CMDB custodian; govern CI data quality (completeness, correctness, compliance).
·       Maintain service maps and ensure accurate linkage between CIs and release/change records.
·       Lead discovery/reconciliation cycles and remediate gaps affecting impact analysis.
5. Risk, Controls & Compliance
·       Identify and mitigate release risks (security, operational, regulatory).
·       Serve as a control authority for change and release governance; enforce mandatory evidence and approvals.
·       Ensure compliance with relevant standards (RBI, SOX, PCI DSS); keep artifacts versioned and audit-ready.
6. Incident, Early-Life Stability & Post-Release Learning
·       Oversee early-life support and stability checks post go-live; drive timely triage of incidents.
·       Lead PIRs/post-mortems with clear RCA and preventive actions to closure.
·       Track stability trends and feed insights into improvement backlogs and dashboards.
7. Stakeholder Alignment & Communication
·       Align cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Architecture, Security, Ops, and Business.
·       Facilitate and document go/no-go decisions as decision owner for release readiness in alignment with stakeholders.
·       Provide concise executive updates on timelines, risk posture, readiness, and outcomes.
8. Continuous Improvement & Automation
·       Improve predictability, lead time, and success rates using KPIs and PIR insights.
·       Champion automation for evidence collection, workflow orchestration, and CMDB updates.
·       Standardize practices via playbooks, templates, and reusable patterns.

Must-Have
·       7–12 years in Release Management, Change Enablement, or Service Transition in regulated environments (banking/financial services preferred).
·       Strong understanding of application architectures, systems integration, and CI/CD practices.
·       Experience operating an ITSM suite (Incident, Change, Release, Problem, CMDB).
·       ITIL Foundation required, Managing Professional preferred.
·       Proven audit discipline including evidence management, segregation of duties, and traceability.
·       Experienced leading CAB/ECAB and go/no-go forums; confident stakeholder communicator.
·       Experience representing technology during audits or regulatory reviews.
Nice to Have
·       Exposure to SRE/observability tooling and practices.
·       Experience with cloud platforms (Azure/AWS) and infrastructure-as-code patterns.
Banking domain knowledge across payments, channels, core banking, or compliance.