Release and Environment Manager

Job Purpose

Arbuthnot Latham are currently progressing through a period of significant business and IT transformation, developing out their internal and external facing systems and proposition.

The Release and Environment Manager is responsible for providing structure and oversight to the process of delivering change safely through the non-production test environments and into the production estate.

The role is responsible for defining standards, processes and governance across all environments, ensuring environments are robust, fit for purpose and that all activities performed within the environment are conducted in a timely manner aligned to plan.

Acting horizontally across both Change and IT functions, the Release and Environment Manager will collaborate with delivery teams, technical leads, testing, operations, and business stakeholders to build and maintain optimised release plans, manage environment usage and scheduling, and proactively identify and resolve release or environment related conflicts.

The role will drive the adoption of Release, Environment, and Configuration Management practices aligned to ITIL 4 and industry best practice, promoting consistent, controlled, and safe delivery of change. This includes influencing stakeholders across the business to ensure disciplined planning, versioning, change control, and configuration integrity.

The role holder must place customer outcomes at the heart of all decisions, ensuring that all changes are assessed, governed, and executed in a way that supports compliance with the FCA and PRA Conduct Rules and delivers positive outcomes for consumers.

Key Responsibilities:

Environment Governance & Dependency Management:

• Act as the central coordinator for test environment usage across the portfolio, developing and maintaining ownership of the environment strategy and approach for all non-production environments.
• Effectively manage releases across the environment stack for concurrent projects.
• Chair the Environment and Release Governance Forum to plan, schedule, and arbitrate environment bookings, conflicts, and freezes.
• Provide consultancy and support to colleagues for how best to deliver against the existing release plan.
• Create and maintain a clear, shared view of environment dependencies, release calendars, and project milestones.
• Work closely with Heads of Platform, Project Managers, Development, and Test Leads to forecast demand and mitigate scheduling clashes.
• Manage environment access controls and permissions in line with bank security policies.
• Oversee the regular patching, update, and maintenance of applications within the test environments.
• Coordinate with Infrastructure and Application Support teams to ensure environments are built to specification and remain stable.
• Establish and monitor key health metrics for environments (uptime, performance, data integrity).
• Manage the deployment of code drops from development into the various test stages, ensuring consistency and accuracy.
• Assist with the triage and resolution of environmental issues and defects.
• Document environment topologies, configurations, and operational procedures.

Process Improvement & Collaboration:

• Analyse environment and release metrics, continuously improving environment provisioning, and booking processes.
• Develop and enforce standards and best practices for environment usage.
• Foster strong collaborative relationships with Technology, Change, and Business teams.
• Manage risks and issues related to test environments, escalating where necessary.
• Integrate Release Management with Configuration Management.
• Development of Release and Configuration Management Frameworks aligning with ITIL guidelines.
• Comprehensive Release Plans, documenting scope, objectives, timelines and required resources.
• Maintain and manage the IT estate configuration and version control procedures.
• Underpin the test process by providing high integrity test environments through quality configuration, versioning and code management techniques.
• Definition of governance, processes and controls to manage environments, including their code and configuration.
• Introduce documented repeatable processes for saves, restores and support test data set requirements.
• Manage the release management plan, helping to resolve conflicts where they arise.
• Provide orchestration, co ordination and communication of any deployment or environment activity in line with agreed release management plan (where possible, harnessing functionality within ServiceNow).
• Active input in the identification and management of Environment/Release Risks and Issues.
• Provide training and support for any release/environment process which is required by users within Arbuthnot Latham (or their 3rd party partners).
• Work with the test team to act as gate keeper for activities within the environments.
• Collaborate with other functions to gain awareness of Environment User Access and permissions.

Risk:

Responsible for managing risks inherent to the role by diligently observing internal policies and procedures.

Key Interfaces:

• Test Team
• Director of Change
• Head of PMO
• Head(s) of Platform
• Technical Leads and Senior Application Specialists
• 3rd Party providers of Software
• IT, Operations and Business SMEs involved in testing
• CISO

Person Specification Knowledge/ Experience/Skills:

• Proven experience as a Test Environment Manager, Release Manager, or similar role within a financial services or other highly regulated environment.
• Demonstrable experience managing complex dependencies across multiple projects and integrated platforms.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in creating and maintaining release plans.
• Technical understanding of application architectures, APIs, and databases.
• Experience in scheduling, coordinating, and chairing governance meetings.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to manage conflicting priorities.
• Strong problem solving skills and a proactive, service oriented mindset.
• Knowledge of ITIL principles (Change, Incident, Configuration Management).
• Knowledge of software development and testing lifecycles.
• Proficient understanding and experience of using a recognised Work Management Tool (such as ServiceNow, Azure DevOps and JIRA) to support consistent processes and practices.

Skills:

• Ability to operate autonomously.
• Good analytical and problem solving ability.
• Ability to manage self and manage others through multiple conflicting priorities, adapting to changing business demands.
• Excellent interpersonal and influencing skills.
• Clear, concise communication (written and verbal).
• Good presentation and facilitation skills.
• Attention to detail, quality, high standards and controls.
• Ability to escal o and report issues, risks or concerns in a timely manner.

Qualifications:

ITIL & Professional Qualifications

• Mandatory:
  • ITIL 4 Foundation certification.
  • Proven practical experience in applying ITIL practices, specifically Release Management, Deployment Management, and Change Enablement, within a complex IT environment.
• Highly Desirable:
  • ITIL 4 Managing Professional (MP) designation, or progress towards it, with specific preference for the following specialist modules:
    • ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value (DSV)
    • ITIL 4 Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support (CDS)
  • Certification in a recognised Agile or DevOps methodology (e.g., SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE), DASA DevOps Fundamentals).
• Advantageous:
  • ITIL 4 Strategist: Direct, Plan and Improve (DPI) certification.
  • Foundational cloud platform certification (e.g., Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, AWS Cloud Practitioner, Google Cloud Digital Leader).
  • Awareness level security certification (e.g., (ISC) Certified in Cybersecurity (CC), CompTIA Security+).
• Team Working
• Influencing Others
• Change Focus
• Working Proactively
• Planning and Reviewing
• Communication and Confidence

About Us Life, Work and Benefits At Arbuthnot Latham, we seek proactive individuals who embrace high standards and bring the energy needed to drive success. In return, you can thrive in a dynamic environment that values your innovative ideas and provides the stability and support for your personal and professional growth. Our human scale ethos means that everyone is recognised as an individual, not just a number, creating a workplace where you truly belong and thrive.

As a service led, relationship driven bank, in person collaboration and wellbeing are important to us and drives our inclusive culture. With this in mind, our Agile Working Policy offers one day a week working from home.

• Competitive holiday allowance with the ability to buy / sell / rollover up to five days per year
• Pension via market leading provider
• 4x Life Assurance
• Discretionary Bonus
• Access to a suite of flexible benefits including Cycle to Work Scheme, Gym Scheme, Health Assessment, Season Ticket / Travel loans and Dental insurance as well as other discounts / vouchers . click apply for full job details