Lead Release Manager

Location: Croydon | Liverpool | Manchester | Sheffield (hybrid 60% office attendance)

Salary: £62,109 (£66,229 London) plus skills allowance of up to £11,300

Close Date: Monday 6th April 2026

Please note that this role requires Security Check (SC) clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. Candidates must also hold or be prepared to undergo NPPV3 clearance.

Home Office Digital designs, builds and develops services for the rest of the department and for government. Every year our systems support up to 3 million visa applications, checks on 100 million border crossings, up to 8 million passport applications and deliver 140 million police checks on people, vehicles and property.

As a Lead Release Manager, you will manage IT related Change within Policing as part of the National Law Enforcement Data Portfolio (NLEDP) Services. You will navigate the complex landscape of technologies, senior Policing stakeholder, 3rd party suppliers, internal and cross-government teams to provide key service within Home Office.

In line with the organisation’s strategic decisions, direction, policies, you will be able to make difficult decisions based on information gathered and effectively assess risk, applying process, methods, tools and applications to provide the best possible availability and performance from the technology.

You will set the strategy for the Operational Release Management team, deciding areas of focus and priority, ensuring that processes are well-documented and reflective of best practice, and agreeing templates and frameworks for process variations that might be applicable across services and portfolios.

As a Lead Release Manager, your main day to day responsibilities will be to:

• Lead the process and deployment of release(s), allocating workload and acting as the highest escalation point if there are any issues, ensuring that standards and timescales are met, whilst demonstrating value for money.
• Provide specialist advice, responsible for approval, prioritisation and refusal of major Release requests, in line with business need.
• Liaise with the Service Architect & Design function to forecast and plan service introduction to minimise disruption to service, ensuring services are delivered on timescales and are documented.
• Set strategy for Release Management in the Service Model, in line with business needs and to deliver quality services, seeking ways to automate and draw on efficiencies.
• Provide reporting to senior leads and representing the function on various boards and forms of governance.
• Drive continual service improvements through the measurement and challenge of services and processes, using tools and capability to automate where appropriate, and reflecting on outputs from Post Implementation reviews.
• Organise team engagement with Incident Management during major incidents, ensuring that appropriate release management representation is made on technical bridge calls.
• Manage patterns or trends of non-compliance of Release policies and processes, engaging at a senior level with Business Portfolios, Suppliers, Transition or Project Manager.

You’ll have a demonstrable passion for change management of a service, with the following skills or strong experience in:

• Developing, implementing and adhering to ITIL v3 / v4 management processes and procedures.
• Performing a similar role within the Civil Service or at other organisations.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to communicate effectively and professionally.
• Proven ability to lead and manage large teams.
• Proven ability to build and manage relationships with suppliers and senior stakeholders
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills

Why work for us...

Find out more information at: benefits - Home Office careers, but some of the primary ones are:

• A civil service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service to 30 days.
• 8 days of public holidays, plus 1 additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.

Please click on apply now to be redirected to our application portal and the full job advert.

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Salary: GBP 48000 - 72000 per year

Experience: 5 years required