Release Train Engineer

Role Overview

Location: Farnborough, with flexibility to work from home depending on business demands.

We are seeking an experienced Release Train Engineer (RTE) to lead and orchestrate the execution of Programme Increments (PIs), releases, and environment governance across complex projects. The RTE is a servant leader and delivery enabler, responsible for ensuring that planning, execution, and release activities flow smoothly from concept through to production. This role blends PI facilitation, release management, configuration control, and delivery governance, with a strong emphasis on quality, transparency, and rapid value delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Release Train Engineer / PI Leadership

• Act as the Release Train Engineer (RTE) for the Agile Release Train, facilitating execution and continuous improvement.
• Serve as PI Master of Ceremonies, owning preparation, facilitation, and follow‑up of PI Planning events.
• Work closely with Product Managers to ensure Features, Enablers, and scope are correctly captured and maintained in Jira.
• Coordinate with PMs to align priorities, respond to customer needs and dependencies.
• Engage with customer stakeholders on PI priorities, scope, and sequencing.
• Own and maintain the PI agenda, authoring and coordinating slide content to guide PI sessions.
• Schedule and facilitate PI events (primarily virtual), ensuring effective participation and outcomes.
• Produce PI level reports, including outcomes from Multi‑RFC PI Planning, ensuring visibility of commitments and risks.
• Analyse PI trends such as scope creep and velocity, working with PMs and teams to understand causes and drive corrective actions.

Inspect & Adapt / Continuous Improvement

• Lead Inspect & Adapt, postmortems, and retrospectives.
• Author and coordinate retrospective slide packs, working with teams to capture learning.
• Schedule, record, and track Lessons Learned and improvement actions across PIs.

Release Management

• Own and manage release scope.
• Define and enforce how scope is added to, removed from, or adjusted within a release.
• Verify all stakeholders are aligned before scope is committed to a release.
• Proactively work with Engineering to clarify which release branch is the origin for each change.
• Reconcile PI commitments against release plans, ensuring alignment between planning and execution.
• Communicate and manage scope changes transparently across the ART.
• Maintain a strong delivery mindset with a clear objective to push work into production as quickly and safely as possible.
• Author customer‑facing scope and release documentation as required.

Environment Management

• Own the Release & Activities Environment Schedule across all environments.
• Coordinate sequencing of releases and activities to minimise contention and delivery risk.
• Ensure environment usage supports PI and release commitments.
• Work with PMs to secure time on the environments in support of newly contracted work in the far future.

Configuration & Change Governance

• Act as Configuration Manager, maintaining strict control over what is deployed into each environment.
• Ensure environments are protected from uncontrolled or unauthorised change.
• Bring changes through appropriate governance forums (e.g., TAB).
• Work closely with Engineering teams and the TIP Manager to coordinate deployments and cutovers.

Build & Branch Governance (ART Gatekeeper)

• Own and manage internal build numbering and versioning standards.
• Assign internal build numbers in line with agreed conventions.
• Act as gatekeeper for all pull requests (BitBucket) into release branches, ensuring:
• Peer reviews are complete.
• Static code analysis has been completed.
• Items are in approved scope.
• Commit messages meet standards.
• Merge conflicts are resolved by Engineering.
• Merge release branches back into the main branch, working with Engineers for conflict resolution.
• Verify Jira items are in the correct workflow states prior to merge.
• Conduct builds into environments and verify that the correct build is deployed.

Release Notes & Jira Hygiene

• Author internal build notes (version / build notes).
• Author customer‑facing release notes.
• Ensure Jira hygiene prior to release cut:
• All issues correctly linked and in appropriate states.
• All code merged into the release branch.
• No outstanding review or readiness gaps.
• Work with teams to resolve items still in peer review or non‑release‑ready states.
• Ensure Jira workflows are applied consistently across the ART.

Qualifications

Essential

• Proven experience performing RTE‑like responsibilities in a large‑scale agile environment.
• Strong working knowledge of Jira, including workflow management and reporting.
• Understanding of Git / Bitbucket workflows and pull request governance.
• Understanding of Git / Bitbucket branching strategies.
• Excellent organisational skills with the ability to manage complex, multi‑team delivery.
• Exceptional attention to detail – work must pass review first time without obvious errors.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, comfortable engaging with engineers, PMs, and customers.
• Positive, delivery‑focused mindset with a bias toward flow and production delivery.

Desirable

• Experience operating within SAFe Agile Release Trains.
• Experience in regulated or controlled delivery environments.
• Familiarity with release governance, change control, and multi‑environment delivery.

Familiarity (not Deep Hands‑On Proficiency Required)

• Cloud technologies & IaC.
• Software development (Java).
• Databases.
• Unix/Linux operational skills.

Benefits

• Competitive salary range: £61,500.00 – £78,800.00.
• Contributory Pension Scheme.
• Private Medical Insurance.
• 33 days Annual Leave (including public and privileged holidays).
• Flexible benefits (life assurance, health schemes, gym memberships, annual buy‑and‑sell holidays, cycle‑to‑work scheme).
• Flexi‑Time Working.

Compensation & Benefits Overview

Pay and benefits are fundamental to any career decision. The Leidos pay range for this role is a general guideline only and is subject to factors such as responsibilities, education, experience, skills, internal equity, market data, and applicable bargaining agreements. Additional employment benefits include health and wellness programs, income protection, paid leave, and retirement plans.

EEO & Diversity Commitment

We welcome applications from every part of the community and are committed to a truly diverse and inclusive culture. We foster a sense of belonging, welcoming all perspectives and contributions, and providing equal access to opportunities and resources for everyone. If you have a disability or need reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please let us know, and we will respond in a way that best fits your needs.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, citizenship, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, pregnancy, family structure, marital status, ancestry, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law. Leidos will also consider applicants with criminal histories consistent with relevant laws.

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