Release Manager

Job Introduction

Selfridges has always been much more than a shop. We’re a social space where everyone is welcome and feels a sense of belonging, a creative playground where culture and commerce collide, and an experimental hub where you can discover the most innovative and sustainable ideas in retail. We’re here to help make the world brighter. And you can be an important part of this. We’ll talk more about the role below, but before we get to that, let’s share with you the good stuff…  

Rewards and benefits 

Life at Selfridges is dynamic, exciting, and always evolving. As well as working with some of the most cutting-edge, iconic and boundary-pushing brands, designers and creatives, we also offer our team members opportunities to help make a positive difference through our network of communities, both within and outside Selfridges. Here are just a few of our rewards and benefits that help make our team experience that bit more extraordinary. 

• Flexible working options to benefit you, your family and your wellbeing that can include part-time, flexi-time, job sharing or working remotely 

• Generous annual leave that increases with length of service 

• Up to five paid volunteering days – from beach cleans to co-ordinating food and clothing donations 

• Family leave that suits your set up including Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, Surrogacy and Shared Parental leave policies 

• Defined pension contribution scheme  

• Generous bonus and/or commission scheme  

• Enviable team member discount including sale previews and double discount days 

• Exclusive local discounts on a range of restaurants, bars, beauticians and entertainment 

• Subsidised gym memberships  

• Annual travel pass and cycle-to-work schemes  

• A sustainable car salary sacrifice scheme 

• Several internal communities to get involved in from our Diversity Board and Green Warriors who are leading the charge on D,E&I and sustainability, to the Wellbeings who are always thinking of new ways to champion healthy minds, bodies and routines for our team members 

• Workplace Options, our confidential team member assistance programme for when life gets tricky or you need a little guidance 

• Access to a wide range of training programmes to help your career development 

Read on to find out how you can play your part in Reinventing Retail… 

Role Responsibility

Key Purpose:

The Release Manager organizes, directs and manages activities for delivering technical changes for the Selfridge’s domains. This role creates the overall Release plans and directs the required resources to deliver the changes for each Release supporting both BAU and Project deliveries.

Role Scope:

To oversee the software lifecycle through design and transitional stages and delivering solutions to Production. Working closely with internal stakeholders and a large number of external suppliers to plan, schedule and execute the necessary activities to establish appropriate test facilities, ensuring suitable deployment controls and an effective route to live for change.

The role sits within the Release & Environments team, which is made up of several Release Managers supporting different domains plus Environment Managers. The role will need to work within a consistent framework and adopt a standard approach consistent with other Release Managers in the team.

The role will work closely with Production Support, Product Owners, Project Teams and other stakeholders to capture and schedule work. Will need to liaise with Architects, Testers, Suppliers and other internal and external teams as required to ensure Test Environments are established and configured and that deployments are managed and controlled to agreed standards. This includes the end to end coordination for all Release & Environment activities for these domains and providing support during the lifecycle. This role will also support any technical requirements or issues identified during the lifecycle, setup, access and incidents, as well as managing all technical changes and configuration logging.

The role requires the ability to deal with different types of stakeholder, from technical, end user or administration functions, therefore the ability to communicate at those levels is key. Excellent planning, communication and teamwork are essential, as is the ability to assess impact and follow through issues to resolution.

This is not a hands-on product SME role, but a suitable understanding of the main products used is desirable. You will also need to support the setup and management of any required CICD/DevOps Toolchains, and any associated automation in conjunction with the wider DevOps team.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the overall delivery process for changes
• Be the primary contact for stakeholders for anything related to Release or Environment policies and processes, as well as details of current and future Releases in plan
• Collaborate with Production Support, Project teams, Development & Deployment Partners and Test teams to plan and deliver Releases
• Capture plans, timelines and requirements to support each Release
• Review requirements and assess delivery options and potential synergies or impact to other work underway
• Plan and establish the technical Test environments needed to successfully support Development and Testing phases of the lifecycle, through to Production deployment
• Schedule and track all changes and supporting activities throughout the lifecycle
• Evaluate scope and set priorities for Release criteria and product quality requirements
• Ensuring the correct mix of resources across Development, Product SMEs and other technical teams are available to deliver each Release
• Proactively identify and address Release issues and risks, work with stakeholders and supporting teams to resolve
• Support the setup and management of CICD/DevOps Toolchains.
• Track and log all incidents, risks and issues and ensure these are both maintained for the lifecycle and useable for future PIR and lessons learnt activities
• Establish regular and repeatable delivery patterns for the applications in scope
• Communicate Release plans and status to stakeholders and senior management
• Manage Change Control throughout the lifecycle
   

The Ideal Candidate

Person Specification

Experience

• This is a key coordination role and as such needs someone with experience in a similar Release Management role and having worked in a heavily federated environment
• Co-ordination of issue resolution with different stakeholders and suppliers
• Understanding of Cutover activities and ability to work with Cutover Manager.
• Very good understanding and experience of the full SDLC
• Knowledge of DevOps and automation processes and tooling is desirable
• Experience in fast pace delivery environments with competing priorities
• Understanding of data refresh and data obfuscation.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure configuration such as firewalls and connection protocols, as well as Knowledge of Private/Public SSH configuration
• Previous retail would be preferable but is not a necessity

Qualifications/ Training/ Technical Skills

• ITIL qualified, specifically with a good appreciation of Service Transition  
• Strong process knowledge of Software development Life Cycles, including Agile
• Proven track record of delivering software products in complex environments with multiple external delivery teams
• The successful candidate may have a background of technical project management or software delivery management from either a corporate or a supplier of software services

Personal Attributes/ Behavioural Skills

• Ability to work with minimal supervision
• Excellent communication, organisation and planning skills, pitching to the appropriate level
• Ability to continually question current customs and practice, and initiate quality improvements.
• Personal Effectiveness (resilience)
• Planning and Organising
• Commercial Sense
• Strategic and Analytical Problem Solving and effective time management

About the Company

Everyone is welcome 

Selfridges is a place where we want everyone to feel a sense of belonging. We embrace every self and are committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive working culture. We are leading with purpose to not only increase the visibility and recognition of under-represented talent within our organisation, but the wider industry too. Here at Selfridges, everyone is welcome – irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age or disability, we stand by equal opportunities for all.   

Our awards cabinet  

We’re not ones to brag, but since you asked...Selfridges has won the award for The World’s Best Department Store an unprecedented four times at the IGDS awards, with an additional award for the Best Sustainability Campaign. We were also recognised as a ‘Best 25 Big Company to Work For 2020’ as awarded by The Sunday Times. 

Selfridges