Release Lead – Common Digital Platform (CDP)

About the role

DGE is looking for a Release Lead for its Common Digital Platform (CDP) applications, based onsite in Abu Dhabi. The role manages and governs the end-to-end release lifecycle, sets standardised release processes, coordinates releases across multiple CDP projects and drives CI/CD/CT so that applications are released safely, efficiently and with minimal business disruption. It is a full-time contract hire position starting in November 2026 and ending in January 2027; Arabic fluency is essential.

Key responsibilities

• Define and maintain the Release Policy, Master Release Plan and End-to-End Release Gate process, and own the Master Release Calendar to avoid conflicts.
• Work with the Change Management team so that all CDP applications pass release governance and readiness checks before CAB approval.
• Drive CI/CD and DevOps adoption, including automated deployments across development, testing, staging and production, and use BDD, containerised deployment and CI/CD tools.
• Coordinate with Development, QA, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security and Change teams, define readiness criteria, checklists, rollback plans and validation processes, and manage release dependencies.
• Use JIRA to track release activities, dependencies, risks and issues.
• Set up monitoring and release dashboards with KPIs such as release success rate, deployment frequency, failed releases, rollback rate, lead time and incidents, and report regularly to CDP leadership.

Required profile

• Proven experience as a Release Lead / Release Manager in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Experience managing releases across multiple applications, environments, integrations and technology teams.
• Strong understanding of application and SaaS development and release lifecycles.
• Strong understanding of enterprise change governance, CAB processes and release controls.
• Ability to coordinate multiple technology teams and concurrent projects.

Required skills

• CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, automated deployments, containerisation and BDD.
• Monitoring and deployment toolsets.
• JIRA and release/change management processes.