Director Release Management, Test Environment & Quality Engineering

Marriott Vacations Worldwide · MVW Headquarters

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Business Context

Marriott Vacations Worldwide is a leading global vacation company with vacation ownership, exchange, rental, resort and property management, and related businesses across a broad global portfolio. The company serves owner families, members, customers, investors, and associates through a portfolio of vacation ownership brands, exchange networks, and management services.

Global Technology Context

Global Technology is advancing a multi-year modernization of MVW’s technical and digital products and platforms across business lines. This role demands a visionary leader with a technical understanding of the range of resort operations technical products in solving complex business challenges. Proven success as a leader in recruiting, developing, and retaining technical talent on high performing teams is required. The incumbent is a proven thought leader, a consensus builder, and an integrator of people, processes, and technology.

Specific Job Overview

The Director, Global Technology (GT) Release Management – Test Environment Management and Quality Engineering directs MVW's enterprise-level release governance, non-production test environments, and quality engineering practices. The Director oversees the movement of releases through the build, test, staging, and production environments—ensuring release readiness, environment stability, quality standards, and risk controls that allow the organization to scale efficiently.

Partnering across external vendors, application development, IT operations, DevOps, cybersecurity, architecture, business stakeholders, and the PMO, the Director drives common release strategies, establishes quality gates and risk-based testing, leads test automation and CI/CD integration, and uses data-driven insights to mitigate risk and drive continuous improvement.

As a people leader, the Director 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.

Specific Expected Contributions

Release Governance, Strategy, & Execution

• Develops common strategies and procedures for release governance across the MVW Enterprise.
• Establishes consistent release management standard operating procedures.
• Maintains an enterprise-wide release calendar.
• Forecasts demand for release resources and identifies opportunities for greater efficiency across the enterprise.
• Collaborates with GT’s Project Management Office (PMO) and release stakeholders to determine appropriate build schedules and creates supporting deployment plans.
• Collaborates with Application Development and Development Operations (DevOps) teams to define processes and implement best practices for deployments and rollbacks.
• Coordinates with Software Engineers and DevOps teams to correct build errors.
• Manages release candidate workflows and collaborates with stakeholders to improve process efficiencies.
• Functions as a liaison between the MVW Enterprise Application Development, and Maintenance and Operations teams to resolve build and baseline control issues.
• Develops, analyzes, and maintains tools that support and automate processes for software releases, (e.g., manage workflow, file versioning, and build automation software).
• Utilizes change/version management software required in the deployment process.
• Informs senior management of enterprise-wide exposure to release risks and plans to effectively mitigate risks.
• Establishes standards for capturing release-related performance indicators.
• Assists in providing reports that identify, for auditing purposes, objects, and files for changes.
• Liaison with Change Management to ensure proper documentation is captured for all changes to the production environment.

Test Environment Management

• Provides test environment allocation for projects and maintenance releases.
• Provides status and information of all test-environments along with connectivity details.
• Monitors all test environments.
• Investigates and troubleshoot test environment issues and coordinate resolution.
• Analyzes data for identifying trends, spotting test environment issues, and taking steps to resolve them.
• Provides oversight of requests for change in all environments and coordinate deployment activities (including deployment, validations, and rollbacks when necessary).
• Keeps meticulous records of all change history in all test environments.
• Coordinates the attendance of resources to resolve all technical calls raised for critical lower environment issues.

Quality Engineering Strategy, Governance & Automation

• Establishes, leads, and maintains quality engineering strategy, standards, and governance across GT delivery and maintenance portfolios.
• Establishes consistent expectations for test planning, test design, test execution, defect management, test evidence, traceability, entry criteria, exit criteria, and release readiness validation.
• Partners with Product, Application Development, DevOps, Architecture, Cybersecurity, PMO, and business stakeholders to embed quality earlier in the software delivery lifecycle.
• Drives risk-based testing practices that align testing depth with business criticality, regulatory exposure, integration complexity, customer impact, and operational risk.
• Establishes quality gates for release readiness, including regression coverage, automation results, defect thresholds, performance considerations, security validation, data readiness, and business sign-off where applicable.
• Leads evolution of test automation strategy for smoke, regression, integration, API, end-to-end, and deployment validation testing where automation creates measurable value.
• Collaborates with Software Engineering and DevOps teams to integrate automated tests and quality checks into CI/CD pipelines and deployment workflows.
• Establishes automation standards, reusable frameworks, reporting practices, ownership models, and maintenance expectations to sustain automation effectiveness over time.

Metrics, Insights & Continuous Improvement

• Tracks and reports quality metrics such as defect leakage, defect aging, test execution health, automation coverage, escaped defects, environment availability, release success, and production readiness trends.
• Uses data-driven insights from release, defect, test execution, and environment trends to identify systemic issues and lead corrective action plans.
• Facilitates release retrospectives, quality reviews, and continuous improvement forums to reduce operational risk, improve delivery predictability, and strengthen production outcomes.

Leadership & Vendor Management

• Lead, coach, and develop associates and/or extended teams responsible for release management, code deployment, test environment management, and quality engineering practices.
• Manage supplier and vendor delivery quality expectations related to release execution, environment support, testing deliverables, issue resolution, and service performance.

Specific Candidate Profile

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems and/or equivalent work experience.

Certifications Preferred

• ITIL 4 (Foundation → Managing Professional / Strategic Leader).
• Certified Release Manager / Release Management certifications (e.g., via APMG or vendor-specific programs).
• SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) — SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE), SAFe DevOps Practitioner, or SAFe Agilist.
• ISTQB (Foundation → Advanced Test Manager, Test Automation Engineer, Agile Tester).
• PMP (Project Management Professional).
• Certified Change Management Professional.

Experience

• Senior IT leader with 10+ years of progressive corporate IT experience, including 8+ years leading enterprise Release Management and 4+ years of end-to-end project delivery.
• Skilled in 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.
• Experienced people manager — coaching, performance management, and workforce/capacity planning.
• Delivers reliably under tight deadlines while ensuring SOX, PCI, and security controls compliance.

Competencies

Analytical & Strategic Thinking

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, able to anticipate multi-level failure scenarios from release activities.
• Strategic mindset that minimizes downtime and risk while balancing speed, governance, automation, and readiness.
• Uses metrics and data to identify trends, communicate risk, and drive sustainable improvements.

Technical

• Evaluates release impacts across applications, environments, integrations, and production readiness.
• Applies quality engineering, test environment management, automation, and release governance to enterprise delivery.

Project Management

• Coordinates release activities, priorities, dependencies, and timelines across multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Manages competing demands while maintaining accountability for delivery, risk mitigation, and continuous improvement.

Interpersonal & Leadership

• Proven leadership, managerial, and collaboration skills, with communication tailored to both management and technical teams.
• Strong facilitation, negotiation, and relationship-building with internal and external customers.
• Builds and leads high-performing teams with judgment, resiliency, and adaptability.

Additional Attributes

• Operates with sound judgment, adaptability, and a continuous improvement mindset in a complex enterprise technology environment.

Marriott Vacations Worldwide is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive culture.

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