Release Train Engineer at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

Role purpose:

• The Release Train Engineer is responsible for the planning, coordination, and deployment of all releases into production within a particular domain or business outcome
• This role is responsible for identifying, managing, and mitigating cross-program risks and issues, in order to facilitate on-time delivery of capabilities and features aligned to the business outcome vision
• This role is responsible for working closely with the domain or business outcome Product Manager and supporting Product Owners to coordinate delivery of capabilities
• This role is responsible for defining release readiness requirements against business outcome needs and validating readiness before release into production

Key accountabilities:

• Manage program planning of engineering delivery
• Monitor and facilitate programs
• Manage the deployment of all releases into production and define / assess release readiness according to business requirements
• Coordinate and communicate the release pipeline to deliver frequent releases across business outcomes; manage external dependencies, ensuring alignment across key partners and vendors
• Track and report on release progress and manage risks
• Manage sourcing relationships
• Continuously improve release processes, implementing best practices consistent with agile methodologies

Core competencies:

• Release train / pipeline planning, coordination, facilitation, and management
• Automated release and configuration management
• Program Increment (PI) Planning
• Production-readiness criteria definition and assessment of modules and supporting systems
• Systems thinking
• Agile software development environment and methods
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery methodologies and tools
• DevOps culture, processes, and tools
• Vendor selection and RFP / RFI management
• Contract definition and negotiation
• Vendor performance, contract, and relationship management
• Expertise with project planning tools e.g. Microsoft Project and Project Server, JIRA
• Multi-sourcing approaches
• Strong business acumen, including with an in-depth understanding of the contribution of the domain or business outcome to the wider digital business strategy and roadmap
• Excellent collaboration skills, with the ability to work in a fast-paced team environment, influencing, empowering, and coaching teams to agile teams to self-organize, self-manage and self-improve
• Ability to contextualise the wider business and financial goals to the domain and make decisions, prioritization, and recommendations accordingly

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

• At least a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, or other related field
• Eight or more years experience in coordinating and delivering major projects and programs
• Extensive experience in managing dependencies effectively across multiple delivery teams, meeting deadlines and business outcome objectives
• Formal training and/or certification in Scaled Agile Framework or similar preferred
• Certified Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM) or similar
• Extensive experience with one or more project/program management methodologies, such as PMI PMBOK, PRINCE2, Agile and MSP and across a range of project types
• Experience with project management tools e.g. JIRA, MS Project
• Professional experience and knowledge of digital and Telecommunications industries strongly preferred 
• Lending domain knowledge, especially micro or unsecure loans preferably from a Fintec