IT Change Manager

Job description

The IT Change Manager is accountable for governing and facilitating the Change Management process across the organization, ensuring that all IT changes — from standard to emergency — are assessed, authorized, implemented, and reviewed in a controlled and risk-managed manner. This role protects the stability of IT services by preventing unauthorized or poorly planned changes from negatively impacting business operations. The IT Change Manager acts as a strategic advisor and process owner, working closely with technical teams, business units, and senior leadership to balance agility with governance.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate the end-to-end Change Management process in alignment with ITIL best practices and organizational policy.
• Chair and facilitate the Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Emergency CAB (ECAB) meetings, ensuring effective risk assessment and authorization of changes.
• Review, evaluate, and approve or reject Request for Change (RFC) submissions based on risk, impact, and resource availability.
• Maintain the Change Schedule (Forward Schedule of Change — FSC) and coordinate change windows with operational teams.
• Assess the risk and business impact of proposed changes, ensuring appropriate mitigation strategies and rollback plans are in place.
• Identify conflicts, dependencies, and potential clashes between concurrent changes across infrastructure, applications, and services.
• Ensure changes align with organizational risk appetite and regulatory obligations.
• Communicate approved changes and their impact to all relevant stakeholders in a timely and clear manner.
• Act as the primary liaison between technical teams and business units during planned changes, upgrades, and service windows.
• Produce clear, concise Change Management reports and post-implementation reviews (PIRs) for leadership.
• Define, maintain, and continuously improve Change Management policies, processes, procedures, and templates.
• Ensure all change activities are properly documented, auditable, and compliant with governance and regulatory requirements.
• Identify and remediate unauthorized changes (change without authorization — CWA) and enforce process adherence.
• Collaborate with Incident and Problem Management to identify change-related incidents and prevent recurrence.
• Administer and optimize the Change Management module within the ITSM platform (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira SM, BMC Remedy).
• Produce KPI dashboards, trend analysis, and SLA performance reports for senior management.
• Drive automation and adoption of pre-approved and standard change models to increase operational agility

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Minimum 4–6 years of experience in IT Service Management, with at least 2 years in a dedicated Change Management role.
• ITIL Foundation certification (v3 or v4) mandatory; ITIL Change Management Practitioner or Managing Professional strongly preferred.
• Proven experience chairing CAB meetings and managing complex, high-risk change processes.
• Strong proficiency with ITSM tools such as ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, or BMC Remedy.
• Solid understanding of enterprise IT environments, including infrastructure, cloud, networking, and applications.
• Demonstrated ability to balance governance rigor with business agility in a fast-moving environment.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills.
• ITIL 4 Managing Professional or Strategic Leader designation.
• Experience implementing Change Enablement in DevOps or CI/CD-driven environments.
• Familiarity with release management, deployment pipelines, and DevSecOps practices.
• Knowledge of regulatory frameworks such as ISO 20000, SOX, ISO 27001, or COBIT.
• Project Management certification (PMP, PRINCE2) is a plus.

Skills

• CAB
• Change Management
• ITIL
• Risk Assessment
• ServiceNow