Release Manager - Active SC clearance required

In a Nutshell

🧭 Role: Release Manager

📄 Employment Type: [Permanent / Contract]

📍 Location: Remote

🔒 Security Clearance: Active SC required

About Amber Labs

The digital transformation partner for highly regulated industries. Our teams deliver digital transformation for organisations operating in complex, highly regulated environments. From securing national borders to supporting critical defence operations, we deliver secure AI, data, cloud and software solutions across high-stakes programmes.

What You'll Be Doing

We're looking for an experienced, proactive Release Manager to coordinate the end-to-end release of a new government digital service.

The service is being delivered by multiple agile, multidisciplinary teams and includes public-facing digital journeys, integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and operational case management capabilities.

You'll turn the delivery roadmap into a coordinated, executable release strategy, making sure development, environments, testing, security assurance, service readiness and governance are planned and managed as an integrated whole. This is a hands-on role for someone who can navigate complex technical and organisational dependencies, anticipate constraints and actively remove barriers to release.

You'll be responsible for:

• Developing and maintaining an integrated release plan and release calendar, aligned with the product roadmap and delivery milestones
• Coordinating releases across multiple agile teams, shared technical services, integration points and operational stakeholders
• Establishing change windows, deployment schedules and escalation routes, and maintaining visibility of dependencies, readiness criteria and the critical path
• Coordinating the environment strategy across development, integration, pre-production and production, working with engineering, platform, DevOps and testing teams
• Scheduling and sequencing integration testing, system testing, UAT, operational acceptance testing (OAT), performance testing and IT Health Checks (ITHCs)
• Managing dependencies on environment access, configuration, test data, deployment pipelines and external technical teams
• Managing change governance, Change Advisory Boards (CABs), release approvals and go/no-go decisions
• Coordinating release documentation, change tickets, deployment plans, rollback procedures and operational handover evidence
• Working with service management teams to make sure incident management, monitoring, support and business continuity arrangements are ready
• Making sure releases meet agreed technical, security and operational controls without adding unnecessary process
• Facilitating release readiness meetings, technical coordination sessions and go/no-go reviews
• Working with delivery managers and product managers to align feature readiness with release readiness
• Coordinating across supplier teams, client technical teams, business stakeholders and third-party providers
• Maintaining a clear view of release risks, blockers, decisions and dependencies, with concise reporting and early escalation

What We're Looking For

You will need:

• Significant experience managing releases within complex digital delivery programmes, ideally in UK government or other regulated environments
• Active SC clearance
• A strong understanding of agile delivery, CI/CD, DevOps practices and modern software deployment approaches
• Practical experience coordinating multiple environments and integrated testing strategies
• Demonstrable experience with CABs, ITIL-aligned change management and service transition
• Experience working with security assurance, penetration testing, performance testing and operational acceptance requirements
• Confidence using Azure DevOps, Jira, ServiceNow or comparable delivery and IT service management tools
• The ability to work independently, coordinate across organisational boundaries and drive timely decisions

Desirable Experience

• Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure-based services
• Experience with government service assessments and the GDS Service Standard
• Experience releasing public-facing transactional services
• Experience of delivery involving multiple suppliers

What's In It For You

We believe benefits should be practical: things that genuinely support your day-to-day, give you flexibility and help you keep developing.

Here are a few of our perks:

• 25 days' annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Private medical insurance with Bupa
• Remote-first working, with access to our Liverpool Street office
• Personal training budget to support your professional development
• Perkbox membership, with discounts across retail, travel, dining and wellness
• Electric Vehicle Scheme after one year of service
• Regular team socials
• Referral scheme offering up to £3,000 for successful hires
• Your choice of PC or Mac

How We Work

We've worked hard to build a team of people who are experts at what they do. Because of that, we'll trust you to get on with your job and give you the space to do it well. But you'll always have plenty of support around you whenever you need it, whether that's to sense-check an approach, tackle a tricky client challenge or simply bounce ideas around.

We keep our structure flat and our processes straightforward. If you have a good idea, you'll be encouraged to run with it, and if something could be done better, we'll encourage you to say so. Ultimately, we work with people who take pride in their work, support their team and want to leave things better than they found them.

What Happens Next?

Once you've applied, our in-house Talent team will review your application and, if it looks like there could be a good fit, they'll be in touch.

For most of our roles, there are two interview stages: one focusing on your experience and delivery expertise, and another focusing on how you communicate, collaborate and approach your work.

A Human Approach to Hiring

We use AI responsibly, in our client projects and internally. When it comes to hiring, though, there are always real people behind the process. Decisions throughout the recruitment process, from CV review and progressing to interview through to making an offer, are made by our Talent team.

Diversity & Inclusion

Amber Labs is an equal opportunities employer, and we're committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to do their best work, regardless of background, identity or experience.

If there's anything we can do to make the recruitment process more accessible or comfortable for you, just let our Talent team know and we'll be happy to help.