Director Release Management, Test Environment & Quality Engineering

Marriott Vacations Worldwide

10d

About The Position

The Director, Global Technology Release Management – Test Environment Management and Quality Engineering directs Marriott Vacations Worldwide’s enterprise release governance, non-production test environments, and quality engineering practices. The role oversees releases moving through build, test, staging, and production environments, ensuring release readiness, environment stability, quality standards, and risk controls. Working with vendors, application development, IT operations, DevOps, cybersecurity, architecture, business stakeholders, and the Project Management Office, the Director drives common release strategies, quality gates, risk-based testing, test automation, CI/CD integration, and data-driven continuous improvement. The Director also leads, coaches, and develops associates and directs third-party resources across release management, code deployment, test environment management, and quality engineering, while managing vendor delivery quality. Marriott Vacations Worldwide’s Global Technology organization is undertaking a multi-year modernization of technical and digital products and platforms across business lines. The role calls for a visionary technical leader who can address complex resort-operations technology challenges, build consensus, integrate people, processes, and technology, and recruit, develop, and retain high-performing technical talent. The position requires a bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems, or equivalent work experience. The candidate profile calls for 10 or more years of progressive corporate IT experience, including 8 or more years leading enterprise release management and 4 or more years of end-to-end project delivery. Relevant expertise includes waterfall and Agile/DevOps lifecycles, CI/CD, automation, ITIL, quality engineering, test governance, test automation, enterprise test environment management, and people management. The role must deliver under tight deadlines while ensuring SOX, PCI, and security-controls compliance. Preferred certifications include ITIL 4; release management certifications; SAFe RTE, DevOps Practitioner, or Agilist; ISTQB; PMP; and Certified Change Management Professional.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems, or equivalent work experience.
10 or more years of progressive corporate IT experience.
8 or more years leading enterprise Release Management.
4 or more years of end-to-end project delivery experience.
Experience governing waterfall and Agile/DevOps lifecycles, CI/CD, and automation, with advanced ITIL expertise.
Proven expertise in Quality Engineering, test governance, test automation, and enterprise test environment management.
Track record of embedding automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and building quality metrics and release-readiness dashboards.
People-management experience, including coaching, performance management, and workforce/capacity planning.
Ability to deliver under tight deadlines while ensuring SOX, PCI, and security-controls compliance.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including anticipating multi-level failure scenarios related to release activities.
Ability to evaluate release impacts across applications, environments, integrations, and production readiness.
Ability to coordinate release activities, priorities, dependencies, and timelines across multiple teams and stakeholders.
Strong leadership, managerial, collaboration, facilitation, negotiation, communication, and relationship-building skills with internal and external customers.
Ability to build and lead high-performing teams with sound judgment, resiliency, and adaptability.
Strategic approach to balancing speed, governance, automation, readiness, downtime, and risk; uses metrics to communicate risk and drive sustainable improvements.

Nice To Haves

ITIL 4 certification, from Foundation through Managing Professional or Strategic Leader.
Certified Release Manager or other release-management certification, such as APMG or vendor-specific programs.
SAFe certification, such as Release Train Engineer (RTE), DevOps Practitioner, or Agilist.
ISTQB certification, such as Foundation, Advanced Test Manager, Test Automation Engineer, or Agile Tester.
PMP certification.
Certified Change Management Professional certification.

Responsibilities

Develop common enterprise release-governance strategies and procedures, and establish consistent release-management standard operating procedures.
Maintain an enterprise-wide release calendar; forecast release-resource demand and identify enterprise efficiency opportunities.
Collaborate with the PMO and release stakeholders on build schedules and deployment plans.
Work with Application Development and DevOps teams to define deployment and rollback processes and best practices.
Coordinate with Software Engineers and DevOps teams to correct build errors; manage release-candidate workflows and improve process efficiency.
Serve as a liaison between Enterprise Application Development and Maintenance and Operations teams to resolve build and baseline-control issues.
Develop, analyze, and maintain tools that support or automate software release workflows, file versioning, and build automation; use required change/version-management software.
Inform senior management about enterprise release risks and mitigation plans; establish release-performance indicators and support audit reporting of changed objects and files.
Coordinate with Change Management to ensure changes to production are properly documented.
Allocate test environments for projects and maintenance releases, provide environment status and connectivity information, and monitor environments.
Investigate and troubleshoot test-environment issues, analyze trends, coordinate resolutions, and arrange technical support for critical lower-environment issues.
Oversee change requests and deployment activities across environments, including deployment, validation, and rollback where necessary; maintain test-environment change histories.
Establish and maintain quality-engineering strategy, standards, and governance across delivery and maintenance portfolios.
Set expectations for test planning, design, execution, defect management, evidence, traceability, entry and exit criteria, and release-readiness validation.
Partner with Product, Application Development, DevOps, Architecture, Cybersecurity, the PMO, and business stakeholders to embed quality earlier in the delivery lifecycle.
Drive risk-based testing aligned with business criticality, regulatory exposure, integration complexity, customer impact, and operational risk.
Establish release-readiness quality gates covering regression coverage, automation results, defect thresholds, performance, security, data readiness, and business sign-off where applicable.
Lead test-automation strategy for smoke, regression, integration, API, end-to-end, and deployment-validation testing where automation provides measurable value.
Integrate automated tests and quality checks into CI/CD pipelines and deployment workflows; establish sustainable automation standards, frameworks, reporting, ownership, and maintenance practices.
Track and report quality, release, and environment metrics, including defect leakage and aging, test execution health, automation coverage, escaped defects, environment availability, release success, and production-readiness trends.
Use release, defect, test-execution, and environment data to identify systemic issues and lead corrective actions; facilitate retrospectives, quality reviews, and continuous-improvement forums.
Lead, coach, and develop associates and extended teams responsible for release management, code deployment, test environment management, and quality engineering.
Manage supplier and vendor delivery-quality expectations for release execution, environment support, testing deliverables, issue resolution, and service performance.
Coordinate release activities, priorities, dependencies, and timelines across teams and stakeholders while managing delivery risks and competing demands.