Release Train Engineer
Description
About the Role
Grade Level (for internal use)
12
The Team
Our Technology Governance & Delivery Enablement team at S&P Dow Jones Indices drives operational excellence through Lean Portfolio Management and Agile ways of working across complex product portfolios, value streams and Agile Release Trains. We foster a collaborative culture focused on accelerating technology delivery while embedding innovative AI-enabled practices and Responsible AI governance. As a globally minded team, we value continuous learning, transparency, accountability, and high-performing cross-functional partnerships that deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.
Responsibilities and Impact
- Lead planning and execution of Program Increments across one or more Agile Release Trains, ensuring alignment between business strategy, portfolio priorities, value stream goals, and measurable delivery outcomes.
- Drive PI Planning readiness by partnering with Product Management, Business Owners, and Technology leadership on vision, roadmap, backlog readiness, dependency identification, capacity planning, and pre- and post-PI planning activities.
- Facilitate core ART operating events including PI Planning, ART Sync, Scrum of Scrums, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt sessions to improve predictability, quality, transparency, and execution alignment across teams.
- Partner with Product Management and Technology teams to support release-on-demand planning for prioritized epics and features while managing cross-team and cross-ART dependencies, risks, and impediments.
- Coach and develop Scrum Masters and Flow Masters to build high-performing, self-organizing teams while championing adoption and scaling of Lean-Agile, SAFe, Kanban, and continuous improvement practices across the enterprise.
- Enable economic and data-driven decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation, applying Agile and flow metrics, and using AI-enabled insights to improve forecasting, capacity planning, bottleneck visibility, and risk management.
- Serve as a trusted change agent and voice of reason across complex stakeholder groups, using strong facilitation, conflict resolution, consensus-building, situational awareness, and transparent communication to drive alignment and accountability.
- Drive continuous improvement through Inspect & Adapt outcomes, program-level metrics, delivery health indicators, team maturity insights, and systemic improvements that advance organizational agility and business value delivery.
- Embed Responsible AI practices across value streams, ensuring adherence to governance standards for human oversight, data privacy, ethical use, technical safeguards, and AI-supported decision-making.
- Use AI-enabled knowledge management practices to capture decisions, action items, delivery insights, and program knowledge to support onboarding, transparency, and consistent execution across the ART.
What We’re Looking For
Basic Required Qualifications
- Minimum 7+ years of Agile delivery leadership experience, including significant Release Train Engineer experience across product teams and 5+ years of people management experience in complex, matrixed organizations.
- Proven expertise in SAFe framework, Agile Release Train execution, PI Planning, ART Sync, Scrum of Scrums, System Demos, Inspect & Adapt, and cross-team dependency management.
- Demonstrated experience operating at Program and/or Portfolio levels, aligning execution to business strategy, portfolio priorities, value stream objectives, and measurable business outcomes.
- 3+ years of experience as a team-level or program-level Agile coach, with ability to coach Scrum Masters, Flow Masters, Agile teams, leaders, and stakeholders to improve Agile maturity and delivery effectiveness.
- Strong facilitation, stakeholder management, conflict resolution, consensus-building, and communication skills across business, product, technology, and leadership audiences.
- Analytical mindset with proven experience leveraging Agile and flow metrics, such as delivery predictability, throughput, cycle time, cumulative flow, burn-up/burn-down, quality trends, and business value measures, for data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
- Experience with Agile project management, collaboration, reporting, and knowledge management tools such as Azure DevOps, JIRA, Confluence, Power BI, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, VersionOne, or similar platforms.
- Understanding of enterprise software development, product development lifecycle, DevSecOps practices, Lean Portfolio Management, and value stream delivery.
- Exposure to AI-enabled tools or analytics that support planning, forecasting, risk visibility, knowledge management, delivery insights, and team productivity within Agile ways of working.
Additional Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Technology, or a related field; Master’s degree preferred.
- Financial services industry experience, particularly within complex enterprise technology environments.
- SAFe Release Train Engineer certification preferred, with additional certifications such as SAFe Program Consultant, SAFe Agilist, SAFe Lean Portfolio Management, or relevant Agile coaching certifications considered a plus.
- Prior experience as a Value Stream Engineer, Release Train Engineer, Agile Coach, or similar enterprise Agile leadership role.
- Deep knowledge of advanced Agile and engineering practices including BDD, ATDD, TDD, CI/CD, automation, Kanban, DevSecOps, and continuous improvement practices.
- Experience applying AI-powered tools, predictive analytics, or automation to improve capacity planning, risk forecasting, delivery optimization, documentation, and decision support within Agile frameworks.
Compensation/Benefits Information: S&P Global states that the anticipated base salary range for this position is $170,000 to $190,000. Final base salary for this role will be based on the individual’s geographic location, as well as experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications. This role is eligible to receive additional S&P Global benefits.
About S&P Global Dow Jones Indic e s
At S&P Dow Jones Indices, we provide iconic and innovative index solutions backed by unparalleled expertise across the asset-class spectrum. By bringing transparency to the global capital markets, we empower investors everywhere to make decisions with conviction. We’re the largest global resource for index-based concepts, data and research, and home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500 ® and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ® . More assets are invested in products based upon our indices than any other index provider in the world. With over USD 7.4 trillion in passively managed assets linked to our indices and over USD 11.3 trillion benchmarked to our indices, our solutions are widely considered indispensable in tracking market performance, evaluating portfolios and developing investment strategies.
S&P Dow Jones Indices is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI). S&P Global is the world’s foremost provider of credit ratings, benchmarks, analytics and workflow solutions in the global capital, commodity and automotive markets. With every one of our offerings, we help many of the world’s leading organizations navigate the economic landscape so they can plan for tomorrow, today. For more information, visit www.spglobal.com/spdji .
What’s In It For You?
Our Mission
Advancing Essential Intelligence.
Our People
We're more than 35,000 strong worldwide—so we're able to understand nuances while having a broad perspective. Our team is driven by curiosity and a shared belief that Essential Intelligence can help build a more prosperous future for us all.From finding new ways to measure sustainability to analyzing energy transition across the supply chain to building workflow solutions that make it easy to tap into insight and ap