IT Release Manager

Pay.UK; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a skilled IT Release Manager to oversee software releases within the UK Payments sector. This role is pivotal in ensuring that all release processes adhere to best practices and organizational policies, while also managing relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners. You will be responsible for coordinating release activities, mitigating risks, and enhancing delivery processes to align with business goals. This position offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact in a dynamic environment, where your expertise can drive innovation and efficiency in payment systems that are essential to the economy.

Benefits

12% Non-contributory pension

Discretionary annual bonus

30 days annual leave

Employee assistance programme

Cycle to Work Scheme

Season ticket loan

Annual fitness subsidy up to £500

Working from home policy

Qualifications

• Experience in managing software releases in Financial Services.
• Thorough understanding of SDLC and CI/CD principles.

Responsibilities

• Plan and schedule software releases, ensuring stakeholder communication.
• Coordinate release activities across multiple teams and vendors.

Skills

IT Release Management

Stakeholder Negotiation

Problem Solving

Communication Skills

Agile Methodologies

Knowledge of ITIL Practices

Commercial Awareness

Education

Experience in Financial Services

Understanding of SDLC

Tools

Release Management Tools

Version Control Systems

Job description

The IT Release Manager will be responsible for the management of software releases for Pay.UK, ensuring people, processes, and best practices are established and adhered to within Pay.UK and the UK Payments Industry. This is an ideal permanent opportunity for Release Managers with an interest in Payments.

Key Accountabilities

Release Planning:

• Responsible for planning and scheduling all Pay.UK software releases across multiple products, liaising with 3rd party partners, identifying and understanding dependencies and potential risks to the UK Payments Ecosystem.
• Accountable as the primary contact for release progress, providing updates, performance metrics, and recommendations to stakeholders at all levels.
• Use experience to implement best practice, improve delivery and release processes to enhance performance, and alignment with business goals.
• Promote adherence to organisational policies and procedures by working closely with Change Management, Risk, and Assurance.
• Design, implement and maintain a forward-looking view/calendar (usually up to 6 months) of planned deployments/releases.
• Stay current with industry best practices and technologies related to release management.

Release Preparation:

• Manage and collaborate with 3rd party vendor development, multiple varied internal stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to define release requirements and deliverables through the release cycle.
• Develop and communicate release plans and progress/status updates to all internal and 3rd party stakeholders.
• Develop, review, maintain and embed all release documentation, including release notes, deployment procedures and timings, and rollback plans to ensure a smooth documented process.
• Readily identify, assess and mitigate risks associated with releases, highlighting potential impact and/or dependencies and escalating to relevant stakeholders where required.
• Identify and ensure sufficient resources are in place to support deployment activity, highlighting gaps with relevant stakeholders to ensure resource requirements are met in a timely manner.
• Communicate planned outages to internal and external stakeholders.

Release Execution:

• Coordinate release activities, ensuring alignment and a smooth and timely deployment process across multiple teams, including external 3rd party vendors, customers, and the Bank of England. (Note: this may necessitate running deployment calls outside of normal working hours).
• Develop and manage communication and coordination plans for each release with internal and external stakeholders, keeping them informed about release progress and potential issues.
• Maintain a full record of release activities and timings against the release plan e.g., planned start/finish versus actual start/finish.
• Conduct post-release reviews with all stakeholders, internal and external, to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement, feeding back into the ongoing process.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience

• Experience in IT release management, with a history of effective software releases within Financial Services.
• Thorough understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) principles.
• Experience of stakeholder negotiation to align interests, overcoming obstacles with strategic intent and technical proficiency.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional, multi-vendor, and multi-customer environment.
• Experience with release management tools and version control systems.
• Knowledge of ITIL practices.
• Experience of Agile methodologies and familiarity with DevOps practices.
• Knowledge of the regulatory and supervisory regime as it applies to Pay.UK.
• Commercially aware and insightful with the ability to solve complex multi-stakeholder obstacles while ensuring company and customer buy-in.
• Skilled communicator and influencer.
• Ability to handle challenging scenarios and critical problem-solving.

At Pay.UK, we value diversity and inclusivity. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply, regardless of how closely their skills and experience match the requirements. We are committed to supporting accessibility needs and creating a welcoming environment for all employees.

About Us

Pay.UK maintains and develops the UK retail payment systems and standards that are core to the economy being able to function on a day-to-day basis.

From Bacs to Faster Payments and cheques – we act as the single operator for all UK retail payments. We put the needs of consumers and businesses at the heart of everything we do, working in the public interest to ensure that the systems the country relies on for its banking transactions are safe, open, innovative, and resilient.

Our payment systems underpin the services that enable funds to be transferred between people and institutions.

Benefits & Additional Information

• 12% Non-contributory pension
• Discretionary annual bonus
• 30 days annual leave (excluding bank holidays)
• Employee assistance programme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Season ticket loan
• Annual fitness subsidy of up to £500 per annum
• Working from home policy - minimum 40% in the office (e.g., 2 days in the office over a 5-day working week)