Senior Release Train Engineer

Sr Release Train Engineer

Company: Cox Automotive - USA

Job Family Group: Engineering / Product Development

Management Level: Individual Contributor

Flexible Work Option: Hybrid - Ability to work remotely part of the week

Travel %

Yes, 5% of the time

Work Shift: Day

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $101,500.00 - $169,100.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) has a primary purpose of supporting an Agile Release Train (ART) by steering it to success and navigating the complexity of delivering software in large organizational environments. The RTE helps resolve and escalate impediments, manages risk, helps assure value delivery, and drives program level continuous improvement. The RTE is accountable for the overall coordination, execution and delivery of value through the program while ensuring alignment with company strategy, commitments, and goals.

Responsibilities:

Program Management

• Facilitates the coordinated preparation and execution of release planning for the ART. This includes:
• Working with the ART team who prioritizes the features to be considered in the next program increment (PI) planning cycle.
• Facilitate the ART team's refinement of features to be considered in the next PI planning cycle to meet the Feature Definition of Ready.
• Assists the ART in communication and coordination with stakeholders and customers during feature definition and delivery.
• Ensures effective communication and coordination for and during quarterly planning.
• Manages change to the ART's PI plan and the impacts of those changes.

Portfolio, Program, and Project Support

• Facilitates ART transparency with external parties, as well as with the teams on the release train. This includes:
• Backlog management and ALM tool data integrity for accurate reporting. May include the collection of metrics, KPIs, investment mix reporting, and other reporting as needed by the ART or organization.
• Facilitation and relentless improvement of periodic ART reviews with organizational leaders and stakeholders to provide clarity on the expected value delivery and to gain stakeholder feedback on changes to direction the release train may need to take.
• May include participation in and assisting in the improvement of the System Demo.

Business Process Improvement

• Assists the ART to relentlessly improve through the facilitation of ART Retrospectives quarterly, or more often as needed, to improve backlog management, ART reviews, sprint reviews, or ART coordination and higher-level function.
• Active membership in the RTE Community of Practice helping the organization to maintain alignment, learn new techniques, and improve technical and quality practices. Work with RTE community to determine ways to help ARTs across the company improve cross-train and solution group coordination and collaboration.

Release and Deployment

• Facilitates coordination of major feature releases and ongoing delivery of value to customers where multiple teams or ARTs are involved in development.
• Facilitates the coordination of initiatives that cross multiple release trains.
• Facilitates resolving or reporting escalated issues involving risk, or dependency management that may be hindering the team's ability to deliver features. Scrum Masters and teams facilitate the resolution of impediments, dependencies and risks within their span of influence.

Other

• The RTE may be called upon to lead projects that impact the ART but may not require work being added to team backlogs.
• Assisting in the execution of product vision.
• Facilitate production support, and relentless improvement of operational workflows and communication, etc.
• Coaches the Agile release train to improve in the implementation of Agile processes, practices, and mindset.
• Ensure all teams follow organizational AI policies and standards. Monitor AI tool reliability across teams. Create backup plans for system failures. Maintain project delivery capabilities without AI while preserving human skills and judgment.
• Lead AI adoption leveraging clear messaging, benefiting the teams and connecting human / AI value.
• Leverage AI as a co-author to deliver complex messaging that drives decisions.
• Use AI insights to analyze program performance and predict capacity needs. Make evidence-based improvements that increase delivery predictability, quality, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Drive enterprise process evolution using AI to markedly reduce time to create CAI Internal Knowledge artifacts and ensure all solution delivery knowledge management is positioned for AI first accessibility.

Skills:

Program Management

• Ability to identify, plan and coordinate a set of related projects within a program of business change, to manage their interdependencies in support of specific business strategies and objectives.
• Maintain a strategic view over the set of initiatives, providing the framework for implementing business initiatives, or large-scale change, by conceiving, maintaining and communicating a vision of the outcome of the program and associated benefits.
• Develop agreement on business requirements, and translation of requirements into operational plans.
• Determine, monitor, and review program scope, costs, and schedule, program resources, inter-dependencies and program risk.

Portfolio, Program, and Project Support

• Ability to provide support and guidance on portfolio, program and project management processes, procedures, tools and techniques.
• Support includes definition of portfolios, programs, and projects; advice on the development, production and maintenance of business cases; time, resource, cost and exception plans, and the use of related software tools.
• Track and report program/project progress and performance are also covered, as is the capability to facilitate all aspects of portfolio/ program/ project meetings, workshops and documentation.

Business Process Improvement

• Ability to identify new and alternative approaches to performing business activities.
• Analyze business processes, including recognition of the potential for automation of the processes, assessment of the costs and potential benefits of the new approaches considered and, where appropriate, management of change, and assistance with implementation.
• Include the implementation of a process management capability/discipline at the enterprise level.

Release and Deployment

• Ability to manage the processes, systems and functions to package, build, test and deploy changes and updates (which are bounded as "releases") into a live environment, establishing or continuing the specified Service, to enable controlled and effective handover to Operations and the user community.

Requirements and Qualifications:

• Applicants must currently be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship. No OPT, CPT, STEM/OPT or visa sponsorship now or in future.
• Must live within a commutable distance to Atlanta office and come onsite multiple times a week
• Bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 4 years' experience as a Release Train Engineer. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master's degree and 2 years' experience; a Ph.D. and up to 1 year of experience; or 8 years' experience
• 4+ years' experience as a Release Train Engineer
• Program Management experience preferably in a Scaled Agile environment
• Strong technical aptitude and experience leading teams in delivering quality software
• Experience in stakeholder management with Director and above leadership
• Experience applying Lean Thinking and Systems Thinking in large organizations
• Experience with Lean Portfolio Management facilitation for program, portfolio, or executive-level
• Experience working in an Agile organization using Scrum, XP, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), or other scaling model
• Agile Certification (CSM, PSM, PMI-ACP ore related)
• Project Management Professional (PMP)
• SAFe Agilist (SA) or other SAFe certifications preferred
• Servant leader and communicator with strong interpersonal skills

Drug Testing

To be employed in this role, you'll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles