Release and Deployment Consultant V

Please note, this position is designated as flexible (aka hybrid), and the expectation is that the selected candidate will report to the assigned office in Greensboro, NC 3 days per week.

Job Summary:

This senior individual contributor is primarily responsible for leading the planning of release schedules and solution releases by setting the deployment strategy, including sequencing and other deployment guidelines, and ensuring scope and details of release requirements are gathered and documented from business partners. This role is also responsible for determining environment readiness for non-production activities, verifying and ensuring environment readiness for production activities by reviewing change records to authorize deployment, ensuring environment availability for pre-production and production, leading the facilitation of production deployment and validation, and supporting governance of releases by developing and maintaining release management metrics and guidelines.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Promotes learning in others by communicating information and providing advice to drive projects forward; builds relationships with cross-functional stakeholders. Listens, responds to, seeks, and addresses performance feedback; provides actionable feedback to others, including upward feedback to leadership and mentors junior team members. Practices self-leadership; creates and executes plans to capitalize on strengths and improve opportunity areas; influences team members within assigned team or unit. Adapts to competing demands and new responsibilities; adapts to and learns from change, challenges, and feedback. Models team collaboration within and across teams.
• Conducts or oversees business-specific projects by applying deep expertise in subject area; promotes adherence to all procedures and policies. Partners internally and externally to make effective business decisions; determines and carries out processes and methodologies; solves complex problems; escalates high-priority issues or risks, as appropriate; monitors progress and results. Develops work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; coordinates and delegates resources to accomplish organizational goals. Recognizes and capitalizes on improvement opportunities; evaluates recommendations made; influences the completion of project tasks by others.
• Leads the planning of release schedules and solution releases by setting the deployment strategy including sequencing and other deployment guidelines; ensuring scope and details of release requirements are gathered and documented from business partners; planning release windows and cycles across portfolios, components, and environments; managing release schedules and dependencies across impacted teams; communicating crucial release plans and changes across stakeholder teams and vendors; ensuring release dates are entered into system of record based on agreed milestones; overseeing the synchronization of sprint plans and anticipated release scope; and managing risks and resolving escalated conflicts and challenges that impact release schedules as appropriate.
• Determines environment readiness for non-production activities by facilitating code migration with all associated configuration development teams; partnering with business, change, and environment teams to secure readiness; supporting testing efforts; and facilitating deployments and eliminating barriers to defect triage sessions as appropriate.
• Verifies and ensures environment readiness for production activities by reviewing change records to authorize deployment; ensuring environment availability for pre-production and production; creating implementation plans and overseeing pre-production dry runs; ensuring overall release and changes adhere to compliance standards (e.g., SOX, Enterprise Change Management, etc.); obtaining compliance approvals for SOX and/or Time Waiver Exceptions; verifying signoff from all testing partners; partnering with business and IT owners to secure release approvals; and managing partner program changes to align dependencies.
• Leads the facilitation of production deployment and validation by developing and distributing key pre- and post- release communications; overseeing release close out activities; and ensuring the resolution of post release issues as appropriate.
• Supports governance of releases by developing and maintaining release management metrics and guidelines; overseeing release retrospectives as appropriate; and serving as an expert to drive awareness of policy changes with business and IT stakeholders that impact the release management process.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum two (2) years managing releases across large or complex programs spanning multiple years with many integration points across the enterprise.
• Minimum four (4) years experience in release and/or deployment management.
• Minimum three (3) years experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelors degree in MIS, Computer Science, Engineering, Health Care Administration, Communications, Business, or related field AND Minimum eight (8) years experience in project management, project coordination, release management, software development life cycles, or a directly related field. Additional equivalent work experience in a directly related field may be substituted for the degree requirement.

Additional Requirements: