Sr Lead, Service Del Impl

Job Summary

Northern Trust is seeking an experienced Change and Release Management leader to own and continue evolving the enterprise Change and Release Management function, enabling safe, predictable, and efficient delivery of production changes across a complex, highly regulated technology environment.

The role is accountable for ensuring that change governance enables business outcomes while balancing delivery velocity, production stability, risk, control, and regulatory expectations at enterprise scale.

Responsibilities

Governance, CAB Risk Decisioning

• Lead the end-to-end Change and Release Management process and ensure alignment with IT controls, regulatory standards, enterprise risk frameworks, and defined governance requirements.
• Chair and actively participate in Change Advisory Board (CAB) forums, enabling collaborative, well-informed, and risk-based decisions.
• Partner with Business Units, Technology, Engineering, Infrastructure, Operations, Risk Control, Audit, and other Lines of Defense to ensure outcome-focused decision-making and sustained control compliance.
• Promote a risk-aware, decision-driven change culture, including strong exception evaluation, challenge, escalation, and mitigation practices.
• Oversee internal and external change audits, ensuring timely evidence delivery, transparent issue management, remediation tracking, and senior leadership visibility.
• Integrate cybersecurity considerations, control dependencies, implementation readiness, and operational resilience into change approval decisions.

Operational Excellence

• Design and operate lean, scalable, and resilient Change and Release Management processes suitable for high-volume production environments.
• Define, implement, monitor, and enforce service-level expectations across the full change lifecycle.
• Produce executive-ready monthly reporting covering change throughput, risk trends, exceptions, control performance, systemic issues, production stability, and improvement opportunities.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen process maturity, deployment quality, governance effectiveness, and production stability.
• Identify recurring failure patterns and control gaps, and coordinate corrective actions with accountable stakeholders.

Technology, Delivery Tooling Enablement

• Partner with the Change Management Product Owner and technology stakeholders to modernize tooling and automate workflows, including requirements definition, testing, implementation, and enterprise adoption.
• Leverage enterprise platforms such as ServiceNow, Azure DevOps, Clarity, and other PPM or ITSM tools to improve workflow transparency, control evidence, and management reporting.
• Apply a strong understanding of application delivery models, software development lifecycles, release practices, testing readiness, and deployment dependencies when assessing change risk and implementation confidence.
• Support effective integration between Change Management, Release Management, incident, problem, configuration, testing, and delivery practices.

Leadership Stakeholder Partnership

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Change and Release Management team, with clear accountability, capability development, and succession focus.
• Act as a trusted partner to Engineering, Application Development, Infrastructure, Operations, Business, Risk, and Control stakeholders.
• Communicate clearly and credibly with senior management, providing concise insights, informed recommendations, and timely escalation of material risks.
• Influence cross-functional teams to adopt consistent enterprise standards and deliver sustainable process improvements.

Qualifications

Experience Qualifications Required

• Minimum 12 years of experience in the IT industry, including leadership accountability in large, complex environments.
• Minimum 2 years of experience leading Change and/or Release Management functions.
• Prior experience in software development or engineering, providing a strong understanding of application lifecycles, deployment risk, and delivery constraints.
• Minimum 4 years of experience working within development-led or engineering-led organizations.
• Demonstrated experience with testing disciplines such as system, integration, or user acceptance testing; a minimum of 2 years is strongly preferred.
• Proven expertise in ITSM controls, IT general controls, audit frameworks, regulatory compliance, and evidence-based control execution.
• Hands-on experience with ServiceNow and exposure to Azure DevOps, Clarity, or comparable PPM and ITSM platforms.
• Demonstrated experience in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant professional experience.

Preferred

• Understanding of Custody, Trade, and Payments Operations within financial services.
• Experience with Service Management Operations platforms and internally developed or proprietary application platforms.
• Experience leading tooling modernization, workflow automation, management reporting, or enterprise process transformation initiatives.
• ITIL Foundation or higher certification.
• SAFe Agilist, Agile Leadership, PMP, or equivalent project and delivery certification.

Success Profile

• Balances governance discipline with pragmatic delivery enablement.
• Demonstrates sound risk judgment and the confidence to challenge, escalate, and make evidence-based decisions.
• Translates operational data into clear executive insights and measurable improvement actions.
• Builds credible partnerships across Technology, Business, Operations, Risk, Control, and Audit stakeholders.
• Operates effectively in a complex, high-volume, highly regulated enterprise environment.

Disclaimer: This job posting has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.