Release Train Engineer

The Role

Capstone is seeking a skilled and collaborative Scaled Agile Program Manager / Release Train Engineer (RTE) to join our Finance and Operations team. In this critical role, you'll support the systems, teams, and applications that drive the growth of our award-winning educational products. As the RTE, your primary focus will be to work closely with our Technology and Digital Product Agile Release Trains (ARTs), as well as business stakeholders, to lead and facilitate our SAFe Planning Intervals (PIs), ensuring alignment across teams as priorities evolve.

This is a hands-on, strategic role that requires a servant leader mindset, a strong sense of ownership, and the ability to see both the big picture and the fine details. You'll play a key role in helping Capstone deliver on its mission by driving effective communication, managing complex dependencies, identifying risks, and promoting transparency across the organization. You'll also be responsible for fostering collaboration across cross-functional teams, helping them stay aligned on goals while continuously improving delivery practices.

The ideal candidate brings proven experience as a Release Train Engineer or Agile Program Manager within a SAFe framework, along with exceptional facilitation skills and a passion for Agile principles. You are someone who can think critically, navigate change gracefully, and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical audiences. You understand the "why" behind the work and can connect day-to-day execution with broader business objectives and customer value.

Our preference is for this role to be hybrid, based out of either our Edina, MN or North Mankato, MN locations.

Why You'll Want To Join Capstone

We support teaching and learning with amazing content that engages students, inspires teachers, and connects families and communities to move literacy forward. Capstone is a fast-paced growth company committed to cultivating a love of reading and learning. We know that Learning is for Everyone.

For over 30 years, Capstone has been a national leader in K-5 educational content including digital products (PebbleGo, PebbleGo Next, PebbleGo Create, Capstone Interactive, Capstone Connect) and award-winning books. We combine a passion for helping foster a powerful love of reading and learning with the talent to create amazing content.

We are a mission-driven company that provides opportunities for professional learning and development and a culture of inclusion and belonging.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

Planning and Management

• Facilitate 4x yearly Planning Interval (PI) sessions for the Capstone Solution Train, consisting of Technology and Digital Product ARTs, including:

Work with team members ahead of the event to prepare the planning and presentation materials and ensure strategic alignment and team readiness.

Partner with team leads to ensure work for ART and Team backlogs are reflected in Jira and tagged to synchronize with our ART and Team planning boards in our planning tool, piplanning.io.

Keep planning activities on track during the event, resulting in a clear and shareable plan for the development teams and business stakeholders that defines the anticipated product deliverables and stretch goals for the PI, handoffs, risks, dependencies between teams, and team confidence levels.

Foster an environment for discussions where team members can ask questions, productively challenge each other's thinking, and share ideas to solve problems creatively and build alignment across teams.

• Manage the execution of our PIs, communicating status of the work relative to our PI Objectives, leading sprint reviews and system demos, facilitating discussions to address deviations from the original plan, and driving continuous improvement across teams.
• Partner with Team Leads and Product Owners to ensure the product backlog is well-groomed, priorities are clearly identified, and work is aligned to business objectives and mapped to Planning Intervals.
• Identify and define dependencies that exist between and across teams (e.g. Design, Engineering, QA, DevOps) and work with the different functions to align on a path forward for the work that minimizes lags and impediments for the teams.
• Manage and monitor releases as noted on the ART Planning board, providing reporting to the team and key stakeholders.

Leadership and Collaboration

• Act as Scrum Master for all Agile ceremonies for Infrastructure/Security team (daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, backlog grooming and retrospectives), facilitating the flow of work to meet sprint goals, team metrics, and consistent delivery of value.
• Assess and coach teams toward continuous improvement at a pace that's sustainable for them and the organization, and advocate for changes that will benefit the teams.
• Champion SAFe/Agile/Scrum practices and values within the Capstone Solution Train and across the broader Capstone organization.
• Build strong partnerships with key internal stakeholders in support of business needs, emulating collaboration, transparency, and open communication.
• Provide regular updates to senior leaders to increase awareness of upcoming milestone dates and to flag potential issues or conflicting priorities.
• Drive to clarity where there is ambiguity in goals, requirements, or solution needs.

Education, Experience, and Skills desired:

• Bachelor's degree from four-year College or university; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 6-8 years project or program management experience with experience in tracking and planning projects, managing dependencies across multiple projects, and making data-driven analytical decisions.
• Release Train Engineer or other Scaled Agile certification preferred; familiarity with Atlassian work management products
• In-depth understanding of SAFe methodologies and best practices with a pragmatic ability to adapt the practices as necessary.
• Proactive and collaborative, takes initiative to suggest ideas or solve problems.
• Sound analytical and strategic problem-solving and documentation skills, with accurate and precise attention to detail.
• Demonstrates ability to effectively manage time and prioritize conflicting demands.
• Highly accountable in completing assigned tasks within communicated timelines.
• Comfortable working with hybrid and remote teams.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills - clear and concise.
• Interest in sharing ideas and mentoring others in areas of advanced proficiency.

Travel Requirements

Approximately 5-10% travel may be required in the future.

Inclusion & Belonging

Capstone embraces diversity, inclusion, equal opportunity, and belonging for all employees and applicants. Many times, underrepresented individuals, including people of color, women, protected veterans, individuals with disabilities, may only consider applying for roles in which they meet all the criteria listed in a posting. Capstone is advancing and changing, and we encourage anyone to apply to our roles, even if you only meet some of the criteria, because you may just be a perfect fit!

We are an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. As such, we welcome applicants of diverse races, ethnicities, geographic origins, gender identities, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, religions, work experience, physical and intellectual abilities, and financial means. All candidate information will be kept private according to EEO guidelines.

If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to hrservices@capstonepub.com.

The pay range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered surrounding compensation including but not limited to: skill sets, experience and training, work location, and other business and organizational needs. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $100,000 to $120,000.

Capstone strives to provide comprehensive and market-competitive benefits to meet the needs of our employees and their families. Click here to see our benefits.?

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Employment Authorization:

At this time Capstone unfortunately cannot sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa. To be considered for one of our roles, applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.