IT Enterprise Release Management Lead

Florida Crystals Corporation is a fully integrated cane sugar company. Florida Crystals regeneratively farms sugarcane and rice in South Florida, where it owns two sugar mills, a sugar refinery, a packaging and distribution center, Florida's only rice mill, a compost facility, and one of the largest renewable power plants of its kind in the U.S., which uses sugarcane fiber to generate eco-friendly energy that powers its sugar operations. Florida Crystals owns one of the largest Regenerative Organic Certified® farms in the U.S. and its Florida Crystals® products are the only ROC™ sugar grown and milled sugar in the country. Florida Crystals owns ASR Group International, Inc., a holding company that conducts operations through its subsidiaries. The ASR Group® family of companies make up the world’s largest refiner and marketer of cane sugar. Florida Crystals is headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida. Learn more at .

OVERVIEW

The IT Enterprise Release Management Lead position requires a strategic leader, who is responsible for the IT release management lifecycle, and whose mission is to protect the integrity of the production environments while enabling business-as-usual corrections, the application patches, support stacks/upgrades and various enhancements; ensures projects are deployed in a controlled manner with minimal risk to the business. 

Release management lifecycle includes planning, scheduling, coordinating and the management of releases for multiple applications across multiple lines of business in pursuit of aligning with the business strategy and growth opportunities.   This position will also be responsible for developing strategies for release governance; establishing consistent release management processes, monitoring compliance with established SLA’s, ensuring QA, developing performance metrics and managing interdependencies and milestone adherence to ensure the integrity of each release.

DETAILED ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop, implement and drive adoption of the release strategy
• Build and track the IT release calendar
• Forward plan release windows and cycles across a portfolio
• Manage risks and resolve issues that affect release scope, schedule and quality
• Measure and monitor progress of release activities
• Participate in release readiness reviews, milestone reviews and business go/no-go reviews
• Communicate release details and schedules to all relevant parties
• Inform senior management of exposure to release risk and effectively mitigate it
• Produce deployment, runbooks and implementation plans in release
• Conduct release readiness reviews, milestone reviews and business go/no-go reviews
• Monitor and measure progress to ensure projects are adhering to release standards
• Report on progress of releases
• Lead and co-ordinate the production cutover activities of major releases, including the execution of deployment plans
• Lead strategic direction for release management processes and tools
  • Establish consistent release management processes and continually work to improve them
  • Identify and drive adoption of best-in-class tools to enable efficient release management
• Lead strategic direction for automated testing for applications
  • Establish consistent release management processes and continually work to improve them
  • Identify and drive adoption of best-in-class tools to automate testing
• Work with AMS Lead and AMS Manager in relation to change management processes, governance and measuring of compliance

WORK EXPERIENCES

• 15 years of experience in IT organization
• 10 years of experience working with project management
• 10 years of experience with release and change management
• Experience and proven track record with developing, implementing and governing processes
• Proven interpersonal collaborative skills: two-way communication skills (oral and written), ability to build relationships, influence others, work with a diverse internal and external stakeholder base and the ability to communicate release management concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Proven ability to be able to deliver results with minimal supervision
• Poise and ability to act calmly and competently in high-pressure, high-stress situations
• Prior experience working in large manufacturing companies, in international environment
• Working knowledge of IT risk management
• Proven ability to navigate complex details and bring them together into a single plan

EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited institution with a concentration in Information Technology, Business, or related field  

ESSENTIAL CAPABILITIES (KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES AND PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES)

• Strong analytical, planning and problem solving skills
• Strong knowledge of SAP platform a plus
• Ability to set proper prioritizations
• Ability to organize and coordinate management of both small and large groups of resources
• Experience with IT risk management and the ability to navigate through it
• Strategic thinking skills
• Confidence to manage up and provide communication to senior management
• Demonstrated leadership skills
• Demonstrated written and verbal communications skills
• Budget management responsibility
• Strong working knowledge of MS products, including Office, Projects, PowerPoint, Visio and SharePoint
• Team player
• Ethics & Integrity – High degree of personal integrity in all business dealings
• Attentive to detail and demonstrated ability to deliver on accountabilities in order to help the business and the team be successful.  Track record of high-performance
• A great team player with a great attitude, good customer service orientation, and focused on delivering outstanding results to their clients and the business, overall
• Well organized, ambitious, courageous, flexible but decisive, with strong interpersonal skills
• High positive energy to take on continuous and complex business challenges in a fast-paced environment.
• Persistence to drive to solutions despite obstacles and/or competing priorities
• Ability to analyse information and make deductions in accordance with departmental guidelines. Ability to track and report data
• Problem solving – identifies and resolves problems in a timely manner
• Stakeholder Management – build strong and productive partnership with IT and Business leads, understand their strategy
• Manages competing demands and is able to deal with frequent changes, delays and/or competing priorities
• Fluency in English, other language skills a plus, but not required

LOCATION OF ROLE

West Palm Beach

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other category protected under federal, state, or local law.  All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.