Senior Manager, Systems Engineering Release Management

At CVS Health, we're building a world of health around every consumer and surrounding ourselves with dedicated colleagues who are passionate about transforming health care. As the nation's leading health solutions company, we reach millions of Americans through our local presence, digital channels and more than 300,000 purpose-driven colleagues - caring for people where, when and how they choose in a way that is uniquely more connected, more convenient and more compassionate.

And we do it all with heart, each and every day.

We are seeking an experienced and strategic leader to oversee Change and Release Management for the Aetna Line of Business (LOB). This role is pivotal in ensuring the delivery of high-quality, reliable technology releases through close collaboration with Application Development, Infrastructure, Security, and other cross-functional teams. The ideal candidate will drive architectural alignment, risk mitigation, and process optimization championing automation and governance across the IT organization.

• Lead and own the Change & Release Management and Governance processes for Aetna LOB.
• Evaluate architectural solutions & system integrations to identify dependencies & potential impacts.
• Manage end-to-end enterprise change releases, including coordination with IT teams, checkout testing, severity assessment, business impact analysis, and executive-level reporting.
• Represent Aetna LOB in Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings; validate enterprise changes, drive risk analysis and support change releases including weekend on call schedule.
• Review and certify change plans for clarity and completeness; ensure execution teams understand risks, timing, and implementation instructions.
• Collaborate with development, QA, performance, and capacity teams to assess risks and define mitigation strategies, exercise authority to halt changes when necessary.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Security, Problem Management, and other enterprise teams to develop SOPs, quality controls, and issue resolution strategies.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives and defect remediation in partnership with IT and business stakeholders.

• 7+ years in senior IT leadership roles managing complex teams and driving process improvement, standard operating procedure (SOP) development, and issue resolution.
• 3+ years designing scalable, distributed applications using microservices & API-driven architecture.
• 3+ years working with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• 3+ years' experience implementing best practices in observability, monitoring, chaos engineering, incident/problem management, and performance optimization.
• 3+ years' experience of network security, firewalls, virtualization, and remote access.
• 3+ years' of experience in change validation, post-deployment verification, and defining success criteria.
• 3+ years' experience in Release, Change, Incident & Service Management, with working knowledge of ITIL.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, including executive-level engagement, ability to lead cross-functional teams, including offshore/onshore vendor teams.
• Strong innovation mindset with a focus on automation and customer service excellence.

• Experience with monitoring/logging tools such as Splunk, Grafana, New Relic, or App Dynamics.
• Familiarity with IT security, compliance, operations, and application development.
• Experience implementing and improving SRE metrics in distributed environments.
• Proficiency with SharePoint, Service Now, and ITIL frameworks.

Bachelor's degree from accredited university or equivalent work experience (HS diploma + 4 years relevant experience).

Bring your heart to CVS Health Every one of us at CVS Health shares a single, clear purpose:
Bringing our heart to every moment of your health. This purpose guides our commitment to deliver enhanced human‑centric health care for a rapidly changing world. Anchored in our brand - with heart at its center - our purpose sends a personal message that how we deliver our services is just as…