Director, Change Management Gateway & Satellite

AST Space Mobile is building the first and only global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with standard, unmodified mobile devices based on our extensive IP and patent portfolio and designed for both commercial and government applications. Our engineers and space scientists are on a mission to eliminate the connectivity gaps faced by today’s five billion mobile subscribers and finally bring broadband to the billions who remain unconnected.

We are seeking a Director of Change Management to lead a critical operational function responsible for governing all changes across our Gateway (ground segment) and Satellite (space segment) domains. This role owns the end-to-end change lifecycle — from intake and risk assessment through scheduling, execution, and post-implementation review — ensuring every change protects network availability and achieves a high rate of successful, non-disruptive implementation.

The ideal candidate will serve as the authoritative change-control authority and chair of the Change Advisory Board (CAB), ensuring that changes to gateways, satellites, and payloads meet defined readiness, risk, and rollback criteria before they are approved and deployed to the live network.

• Lead the design, governance, and continuous improvement of the enterprise change management process spanning Gateway and Satellite/Payload domains
• Chair the Change Advisory Board (CAB), facilitating cross-domain review, risk assessment, and Go/No-Go authorization for all normal, standard, and emergency changes
• Establish and enforce change policies, risk-classification criteria, maintenance windows, and rollback/back-out requirements to safeguard network availability, with all changes recorded and managed in Jira in line with the FCAPS operations standard
• Own the forward schedule of change, coordinating gateway, RAN, satellite, and payload changes to prevent conflicts and minimize customer-facing service impact
• Provide final Go/No-Go authorization for changes based on readiness, risk, blast radius, and rollback assurance across Gateway and Satellite domains
• Ensure repeatability, traceability, and auditability of all change records, approvals, and post-implementation reviews
• Lead post-implementation reviews and root-cause analysis of failed or rolled-back changes, driving corrective actions and measurable improvement in change success rate
• Collaborate with Service Delivery, Service Assurance, Network and Satellite Operations, and R&D to align change readiness, validation evidence, and deployment sequencing — including gating changes on Golden Beam Acceptance outcomes where service beams are affected
• Prevent unauthorized, high-risk, or insufficiently planned changes from reaching the production network
• Define and report change management KPIs — change success rate, change-related incidents, emergency-change ratio, and schedule adherence — to executive stakeholders
• Build, lead, and mentor the change management team, promoting a disciplined change culture that positions change control as a critical safeguard of network availability

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field
• Master’s degree in Engineering Management, Business Administration, or a related discipline preferred; ITIL certification (Change/Release Management) strongly preferred

• Minimum of 15+ years of experience in telecommunications, satellite communications, or network operations, including significant experience owning change or release management
• At least 5+ years leading change management, CAB governance, or operational readiness functions in a complex, mission-critical environment

• Experience governing changes across both ground-segment (gateway/RAN) and space-segment (satellite/payload) systems
• Strong background in ITIL-aligned change, release, and configuration management practices
• Experience implementing change automation, CAB workflows, and forward-schedule tooling (e.g., Service Now or Jira)
• Familiarity with complex network architectures, maintenance windows, and…