Sr. Release Train Engineer

Job Summary:

At Estes, we are working to not only transform the company but the industry at large, and we are looking for a Senior Release Train Engineer to help lead that change in one of our Agile Release Trains. The Release Train Engineer (RTE) serves as a key facilitator within the Agile Release Train (ART), ensuring the seamless delivery of value in alignment with business goals. This role is responsible for fostering a culture of transparency by ensuring clear communication on progress, risks, and dependencies throughout the program. The RTE actively addresses obstacles and bottlenecks, enabling teams to maintain focus and velocity in delivering high-quality solutions. The RTE builds resilient processes that adapt to changing business needs while promoting a stable, predictable flow of value. With a strong understanding of Agile principles and Lean methodologies, the RTE guides the ART in adopting best practices, supporting teams in efficiently achieving their goals. A focus on continuous improvement drives the optimization of workflows, enhancing team performance and ensuring long-term success. As a champion of knowledge sharing, the RTE ensures that information, lessons learned, and best practices are widely communicated across teams, fostering a collaborative environment. The role also emphasizes simplicity, reducing complexity to streamline processes and maximize value delivery. Ultimately, the RTE empowers teams to deliver on commitments while promoting a culture of innovation, learning, and sustained success.

• Drive the Lean-Agile Mindset, enabling the organization to become high-performing as one cohesive team
• Manage and optimize the flow of value through the program and/or Agile Release Train (ART) using various tools
• Establish annual schedule for Iterations and Program Increments (PIs), aligning with the enterprise portfolio and other programs/trains as applicable
• Facilitate PI Planning business readiness that produces business context, a roadmap and backlog(s)
• Facilitate PI Planning technology readiness that produces the architecture briefing and applicable solution context
• Facilitate PI Planning event that results in key planning outputs such as draft PI objectives, capacity plans, potential risks and dependencies at the program and/or ART level
• Summarize Team and PI Objectives and publish them for visibility and transparency
• Ensures that execution is aligned with product strategy by working with Product Owners , managers and leadership
• Assist with funding decision making by facilitating value and estimating discussions
• Helps define norms/agreements for the ART and enforces the agreements
• Enables the ART to become high performing through collaboration and relentless focus on continuous improvement
• Measures ART delivery, maturity, and performance and reviews the metrics with the ART to identify improvement opportunities
• Help manage risks and dependencies
• Provide input on resourcing to address critical issues
• Work with relevant business and technology stakeholders to ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Help define and work within the portfolio, program and team budgetary practices
• Actively participate in Centers of Improvement and Communities of Practice to shape the use of agile, engineering, DevOps and built-in quality practices
• Regular attendance is required.
• This is not an all-inclusive list of job requirements and/or duties and may not contain all mental and physical capabilities necessary to perform the job at all times due to circumstances. Operational, safety and other needs may require the employee to perform any and all other duties as assigned. Employees are expected, and must be able to perform all such duties and tasks.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree with emphasis in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field or any combination of education and experience which would provide an equivalent background preferred. Advanced degree preferred
• Demonstrated capability performing the Release Train Engineer (RTE) role for five years in a complex technical environment using SAFe (or other scaled agile frameworks) with experience in Program Increment Planning and Prioritization required
• Agile Software Development experience required
• Excellent communication skills including listening, verbal, written, facilitation and presentation skills; demonstrated experience summarizing technical efforts and how they align to business impact required
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills required
• Demonstrated ability in creating and communicating portfolio updates, identifying information pertinent to stakeholders and articulating the overall effort, importance and impact required
• Pr