Director, Release & Change Management

US Corp Office: 2325 Dulles Corner Blvd., Suite 600, Herndon, VA 20171, USA

Herndon, VA - Hybrid (3x/week)

Exostar is seeking a Director of Release Engineering to establish, scale, and lead this function from the ground up. This is a senior leadership position — not a process management or senior IC role. You will fundamentally reshape how Exostar approaches software delivery and operate as a peer to the Directors of Dev Ops, Engineering, Operations, and QA.

You will co‑own the delivery architecture, drive cross‑functional alignment, and build the governance frameworks that enable the entire organization to ship faster, more safely, and with full compliance auditability across a FedRAMP Moderate / CMMC Level 2 environment serving the Defense Industrial Base.

The CTO expects this leader to transform how change management and releases work at Exostar — building a function that carries the company through its next stage of growth. You will set strategy, influence peers without formal authority, and report outcomes directly to senior leadership.

Exceptional written and verbal communication is a baseline requirement. You surface risks before they become issues, set clear expectations early, and represent the release engineering function credibly with executive stakeholders, compliance auditors, and customers.

• Define the org model for release engineering - centralized center of excellence vs. federated embedding - and evolve it as Exostar scales
• Mentor and grow release engineers and Dev Ops practitioners across the organization
• Act as a peer and strategic partner to Directors of Dev Ops, Engineering, Operations, and QA; align delivery strategy across all four functions
• Represent the release function in leadership forums; report on delivery health, risk posture, and improvement roadmaps to the CTO and executive team
• Manage outward Customer Communication

• Own and evolve the enterprise release framework across all product teams and platforms; define how Exostar ships software at scale
• Establish risk‑based change management aligned to CI/CD; define and govern standard, significant, and major change pathways
• Define Engineering Change Request (ECR) standards; ensure full traceability and auditability across all systems
• Facilitate Change Advisory Board (CAB) processes and governance gates; lead executive‑level change review when required
• Set architecture standards for enterprise CI/CD pipelines; define approval gates, automated validation, and deployment patterns
• Partner with Exostar's ESO organization on compliance posture for release processes aligned to FedRAMP, NIST, and SOC2; own deployment evidence and audit trail strategy
• Eliminate release conflicts and deployment collisions; maintain portfolio‑level visibility into schedules, risks, and production readiness

• Lead adoption of AI‑assisted release capabilities: predictive deployment health, automated rollback, anomaly detection, ECR generation, and release notes
• Champion LLM‑powered workflow automation and documentation tooling across Engineering and Dev Ops
• Define, own, and report DORA metrics organization‑wide: deployment frequency, change failure rate, MTTR, approval compliance, and audit readiness
• Identify systemic bottlenecks and influence organizational behavior through data‑driven decision making and executive storytelling

• 10+ years in Release Management, Dev Ops, Software Delivery, or operational engineering leadership
• 5+ years in a formal leadership role managing teams - including hiring, developing, and retaining engineering talent
• Have a demonstrated track record leading release engineering transformation in a multi‑team, enterprise SaaS environment
• Have deep expertise implementing change management and release governance at scale in regulated environments
• Working knowledge of FedRAMP, NIST, SOC2, or equivalent compliance frameworks applied to software delivery
• Have strong executive communication skills - written, verbal, and presentation - with experience reporting to C‑suite and interfacing with auditors
• Have deep working…