Good luck with the new job. It's fascinating to learn the sorts of nitty-gritty considerations that go into the arts.
Do the new strings need to be tuned more often? I remember when I put new strings on my guitar, they'd be stretching out of tune for weeks.
Yeah, the initial stretching needs a bit of time to settle and stabilise. Generally for the metal, it is quicker than for gut... but it is also possible to pre-stretch them to reduce that time!
What I tend to do is to overstretch time overnight under more tension than the pitch requires (so, tuning sharp).