Release Train Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Establish the Role & Practice (Months 1–3)

  • Conduct a rapid organizational assessment — map team topology, current ceremonies, tooling, and where value is getting stuck (two weeks)
  • Define and socialize what the RTE function means in this organization; build buy-in with engineering leads, product managers, and senior leadership (< one month)
  • Stand up Program Increment (PI) Planning where it doesn't exist; retrofit or replace existing planning cadences where they do (by month 3)

• Hands-On Dependency Management

  • Own the dependency board — not just facilitate it, but actively track, visualize, and resolve cross-team dependencies in tooling (Jira, Azure DevOps, or equivalent)
  • Understand and manage upstream/downstream dependencies, surfacing risks before they become blockers
  • Apply the ROAM technique (Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated) to risks identified during PI Planning and track them throughout each increment
  • Work directly in the delivery toolchain — structure work item hierarchies, configure dashboards, and maintain ART-level transparency in reporting

• Sprint Process Consulting

  • Embed with Scrum Masters and teams to diagnose ceremony health — not to audit, but to coach and improve
  • Serve as facilitator, flow steward, dependency broker, improvement coach, and strategic connector across teams
  • Design and facilitate retrospectives, I&A workshops, and team-of-teams syncs that produce real process change — not just documentation
  • Identify and close gaps between how teams <em>think</em> they're working and how value <em>actually</em> flows

• Ongoing ART Leadership

  • Serve as the first point of contact for cross-team challenges, maintaining transparency across the release train so that progress, risks, and impediments are visible to all stakeholders
  • Facilitate ART Sync (Scrum of Scrums + PO Sync) and System Demos on a regular cadence
  • Partner with Product Management and Architecture to ensure backlog readiness and alignment before each PI
  • Track a small set of meaningful delivery metrics and use them to drive improvement — not reporting theater

What We're Looking For

• Demonstrated experience entering an organization where the RTE or equivalent role did not exist and successfully building it — you must be able to speak to this specifically in your interview
• Strong technical literacy in software delivery systems, CI/CD realities, and engineering constraints — enough to facilitate credible planning conversations with engineers and remove technical blockers
• Hands-on proficiency in Agile tooling (Jira and/or Azure DevOps): work item structuring, dependency mapping, dashboards, and metrics
• Deep fluency in SAFe — PI Planning, ART events, roles, and lean-agile principles (SAFe RTE or SPC certification preferred)
• 7+ years in Agile delivery leadership; 3+ years functioning as an RTE or equivalent ART-level facilitator

Differentiators

• Experience with value stream mapping to identify systemic bottlenecks and handoffs across teams
• Comfort operating in environments with ambiguous or competing priorities — you define clarity, you don't wait for it
• Coaching presence that works at multiple levels: an individual Scrum Master in a 1:1, a skeptical engineering director in a leadership meeting, and an ART of 80+ people during PI Planning
• Exposure to Lean Portfolio Management and connecting portfolio flow (epics, funding, OKRs) to ART execution

What Success Looks Like

• <strong>90 days:</strong> Org assessment complete, first PI Planning facilitated or scoped, dependency tracking live in tooling, key relationships established
• <strong>6 months:</strong> PI cadence running, Scrum Master community actively engaged, cross-team dependency incidents measurably reduced
• <strong>12 months:</strong> The role is institutionalized — teams know what it is, why it matters, and the RTE function outlasts any individual in it

We know great RTEs are rare. If you've built this from scratch somewhere before and you're ready to do it again, we want to talk.