Principal Platform & Release Governance Engineer

About the role

Risepoint is an education technology company that provides world-class support and trusted expertise to more than 100 universities and colleges. We primarily work with regional universities, helping them develop and grow their high-ROI, workforce-focused online degree programs in critical areas such as nursing, teaching, business, and public service. Risepoint is dedicated to increasing access to affordable education so that more students, especially working adults, can improve their careers and meet employer and community needs. Risepoint's mission depends on our ability to deliver secure, reliable, high-quality software at increasing velocity. Engineering Enablement ensures product teams can move fast with guardrails --- not gates --- by embedding release safety, security, and operational standards directly into automated systems. The Impact You Will Make You will define what "release ready" means at Risepoint and engineer that definition into automation. This role owns the enterprise release governance model and is accountable for transforming manual approval processes into measurable, automated, risk-based controls. You will design CAB 2.0 --- a maturity-based release framework that enables qualified teams to self-approve releases using objective readiness signals embedded in CI/CD pipelines. Your success is measured by systemic change: reduced manual governance, improved deployment safety, and durable automation that scales across the engineering organization. How You Will Bring Our Mission to Life Enterprise Release Governance Architecture (CAB 2.0) Define and formalize enterprise release readiness standards Design and implement a maturity-based release model that enables self-service releases for qualified teams Replace manual CAB evidence gathering with automated policy-as-code controls embedded in delivery pipelines Establish objective eligibility thresholds for self-approval and define escalation paths for non-compliance Ensure governance mechanisms are auditable, measurable, and aligned with business risk tolerance Platform & Pipeline Engineering Design and scale standardized CI/CD pipelines that embed: Automated security and compliance controls Quality thresholds and testing gates Deployment safety mechanisms (canary, progressive rollout, automated rollback) Automated release evidence collection Encode governance standards as executable mechanisms rather than documentation or review boards Ensure solutions scale consistently across dozens of systems without bespoke customization Automation of Transitional Processes Own and oversee existing CAB and release workflows during the transformation period Systematically eliminate recurring manual approval steps through engineered solutions Deliver a two-year roadmap that transitions legacy governance mechanisms to automated equivalents as applications sunset Organizational Influence & Adoption Direct contractor efforts aligned to platform and governance outcomes Drive cross-team adoption of standardized pipelines and maturity thresholds Influence engineering, AppSec, QA, and Cloud Operations stakeholders through working software and measurable outcomes Partner with leadership to align release standards with risk tolerance and operational resilience goals Continuous Improvement of Operational Signals Analyze release-related incidents and systemic failure patterns Convert recurring release pain points into automation, guardrails, or elimination Use telemetry and DORA metrics to guide prioritization and validate impact What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months) CAB 2.0 framework defined, approved, and operationalized ≥60% reduction in manual CAB approvals for eligible teams ≥75% of production systems onboarded to standardized release pipelines ≥2 DORA metrics measurably improved (deployment frequency, change failure rate, or lead time) ≥90% of repositories meeting baseline security and quality thresholds via automated enforcement Documented reduction in release-related coordination tickets How Impact Will Be Measured Manual CAB volume reduction % teams eligible for self-approved releases Golden pipeline adoption rate Deployment frequency Change failure rate MTTR % repositories meeting automated compliance thresholds Reduction in release-related incidents Developer experience feedback What You'll Bring to the Team Experience That Matters Most 8+ years designing or operating enterprise-scale CI/CD and release systems Demonstrated experience transforming governance-heavy or approval-driven processes into automated mechanisms Proven ability to define technical standards adopted across multiple teams Deep expertise in policy-as-code, secure-by-default delivery systems, and automated compliance controls Experience embedding safe deployment patterns at scale Systems-level thinking across reliability, security, and velocity tradeoffs Experience That's Great to Have Experience modernizing or replacing CAB models Experience in federated DevOps or platfo