Manager | IT Testing, Change, & Environmental Relations | Full-Time

Henry Ford Health System; Detroit (MI); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Henry Ford Health System in Detroit is seeking a Manager of IT Testing, Change, and Environment/Release to lead Epic testing, change coordination, and environment management across releases. You will partner with application teams, infrastructure, PMO, and governance to protect system integrity, operational readiness, and clinical workflow while driving standards, metrics, and continuous improvement.

The role emphasizes process discipline and the smart use of automation and AI-enabled tools to

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in IT, CS, engineering, healthcare informatics, or related field.
• Minimum of five years in Epic/EMR testing, environment management, release management, and/or change coordination.
• Minimum of two years in a managerial or supervisory role.
• Experience within enterprise change management and ITSM frameworks.
• Experience partnering with support teams to review post go-live defects and incidents and feed learnings back into testing strategy.
• Practical knowledge of automation, AI-assisted tooling, or productivity platforms to scale activities.

Responsibilities

• Oversees testing leadership and activities for Epic upgrades and related testing types.
• Coordinates testing across releases, balancing milestones with environment availability and release schedules.
• Manages non-production Epic environments and ensures access controls and readiness.
• Oversees Epic release management activities and maintains release integrity.
• Drives governance, documentation, and continuous improvement across testing, change, environment, and release.
• Acts as 24x7 escalation point for testing, change, environment, and release issues.

Skills

Testing leadership

Change coordination

Environment management

Release management

Automation tooling

AI-assisted tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare Informatics, or related field

Tools

Epic

ITSM tooling

Automation tooling

Job description

Manager | IT Testing, Change, & Environmental Relations | Full-Time

The Manager - IT Testing, Change, and Environment/Release is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, coordination, and operational execution across Epic testing, Epic-aligned change management, environment allocation, and release management. This role ensures safe, predictable, and high-quality delivery of Epic functionality while protecting system integrity, clinical operations, and organizational readiness.

The Manager leads a combined team supporting testing (integrated and supporting other test types), Epic change coordination, and environment/release operations, and serves as a key operational partner to application teams, infrastructure, PMO, and enterprise IT governance groups. The role operates within established enterprise change and governance frameworks while providing Epic-specific expertise, coordination, and execution. The Manager serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point and drives continuous improvement through process discipline, metrics, and effective use of tooling.

PRINCIPLE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Testing Leadership and Oversight
  • Oversees integrated Epic testing and ensures the team supports other testing types (application, unit, MRT, regression, etc.) as able.
  • Organizes, directs, and manages testing activities for Epic upgrades, Service Updates (SUs), enhancements, fixes, and major initiatives.
  • Coordinates testing activities across iterative releases, balancing test milestones with environment availability and release schedules.
  • Ensures testing deliverables, milestones, risks, and outcomes are clearly documented and communicated to stakeholders.
  • Assists with testing strategy across decentralized application teams, providing guidance, standards, and risk awareness.
• Change Management (Epic-Aligned)
  • Oversees Epic-specific change coordination while aligning to enterprise IT change management and ITSM frameworks.
  • Serves as an active member of the Change Advisory Board (CAB), providing operational insight and advocating for Epic system integrity and readiness.
  • Partners with the central IT Change team to ensure changes are properly vetted, packaged, scheduled, and communicated.
  • Enforces appropriate change controls across production and non-production environments to protect test validity and operational stability.
• Plans, schedules, and controls deployment and utilization of all non-production Epic environments.
• Balances project, enhancement, testing, and operational needs across shared environments while mitigating conflicts and risks.
• Establishes and maintains clear purpose definitions for each environment in partnership with infrastructure and application teams.
• Coordinates with infrastructure, access administration, and other IT partners to ensure environment readiness, availability, and appropriate access controls.
• Maintains environment calendars, utilization views, and forward-looking capacity plans.
• Release Management
  • Oversees Epic release management activities, including upgrades, enhancements, Special Updates, and fixes.
  • Maintains release integrity across non-production and production environments.
  • Identifies and communicates interdependencies, risks, and readiness concerns associated with releases.
  • Participates in operational readiness reviews and go/no-go discussions for Epic releases and major events.
• Process Ownership, Governance, and Continuous Improvement
  • Serves as the process owner for Epic environment and release management tooling, calendars, and supporting workflows.
  • Develops, maintains, and enforces standard operating procedures, documentation, and audit trails across testing, change, environment, and release activities.
  • Chairs or facilitates governance forums such as the Environment Council to drive alignment, transparency, and decision-making.
  • Maintains compliance with SOC, CAB, ITIL/ITSM, regulatory, and Epic standards.
  • Captures operational signals, lessons learned, and metrics to drive continuous improvement and risk reduction.
  • Performs continual review of emerging AI, automation, and AIOps capabilities applicable to testing, change, environment, and release management; evaluates tools for risk reduction, efficiency, and scalability; and partners with enterprise teams to pilot or adopt appropriate solutions where value is demonstrated.
• Operational Readiness and Escalation
  • Serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point for testing, change, environment, and release-related issues.
  • Manages escalation paths and coordination across application, infrastructure, vendor, and operational teams.
  • Supports readiness for Epic upgrades, go-lives, environment freezes, DR cutover/cutback events, and critical fix installs.
• Financial and People Leadership
  • Supports budget planning and maintenance activities by providing operational inputs, utilization data, and forecasting insights (budget ownership retained at the Director level).
  • Provides direct leadership and coaching to a team of approximately five direct reports, including testing leads/analysts and change management resources.
  • Supports matrixed resources and prepares for future growth as scope expands.
  • Fosters a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare Informatics, or a related field.
• Minimum of five (5) years of experience in Epic or EMR testing, environment management, release management, and/or change coordination.
• Minimum of two (2) years of prior management or supervisory experience.
• Demonstrated experience operating within enterprise change management and ITSM frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with operational support teams to review post go-live defects and incidents, analyze trends arising from incident tickets, and feed those learnings back into testing strategy, scope, and process improvement activities.
• Practical working knowledge of automation, AI-assisted tooling, or productivity platforms used to scale testing, change, environment, or release activities without proportional increases in staffing (e.g., test automation, workflow automation, analytics, or AI-assisted planning and analysis).
• Strong analytical, written, and verbal communication skills.
• Proven ability to coordinate across technical, clinical, and operational stakeholders.

CERTIFICATIONS/LICENSURES REQUIRED:

• Epic certifications preferred, including Data Courier, HODs, or other environment related certifications/badges.
• Certification or experience in SDLC, Release Management, Project Management, or ITIL preferred.

Additional Information

• Organization: Corporate Services
• Shift: Day Job
• Union Code: Not Applicable

This posting represents the major duties, responsibilities, and authorities of this job, and is not intended to be a complete list of all tasks and functions. It should be understood, therefore, that incumbents may be asked to perform job-related duties beyond those explicitly described above.

Overview

Henry Ford Health partners with millions of people on their health journey, across Michigan and around the world. We offer a full continuum of services – from primary and preventative care to complex and specialty care, health insurance, a full suite of home health offerings, virtual care, pharmacy, eye care and other health care retail. With former Ascension southeast Michigan and Flint region locations now part of our team, Henry Ford’s care is available in 13 hospitals and hundreds of ambulatory care locations. Based in Detroit, Henry Ford is one of the nation’s most respected academic medical centers and is leading the Future of Health: Detroit, a $3 billion investment anchored by a reimagined Henry Ford academic healthcare campus. Learn more at henryford.com/careers .

The health and overall well-being of our team members is our priority. That’s why we offer support in the various components of our team’s well-being: physical, emotional, social, financial and spiritual. Our Total Rewards program includes competitive health plan options, with three consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), a PPO plan and an HMO plan. Our team members enjoy a number of additional benefits, ranging from dental and eye care coverage to tuition assistance, family forming benefits, discounts to dozens of businesses and more. Employees classified as contingent status are not eligible for benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity / Affinitive Action Employer Henry Ford Health is

committed to the hiring, advancement and fair treatment of all individuals without regard to

race, color, creed, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, size, height,

weight, marital status, family status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and genetic information,

or any other protected status in accordance with applicable federal and state laws.

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