Senior Release Manager

Responsibilities

• The Release Manager will collaborate with cross functional teams including developers, testers, basis administrators, system environment owners and business stakeholders to minimise downtime and risks.
• Oversee the end to end management of SAP software and integrated systems, ensuring seamless release cycles.
• Plan, coordinate, and execute SAP centric software releases, including patches, upgrades, and custom developments, through structured pipelines from development to production.
• Implement and optimise release strategies using tools like SAP Solution Manager (ChaRM), Transport Management System (TMS), or integrated CI/CD frameworks.
• Ensure that the boundary systems needed are connected or emulated, across the relevant systems, based on the needs of the release.
• Conduct release planning meetings, manage change requests, and ensure adherence to release calendars and rollback procedures.
• Monitor and mitigate risks during deployments, including impact assessments on surrounding systems (e.g., interfaces with ERP, CRM, BI tools).
• Ensure all SAP environments (dev, test, preprod, prod) are provisioned, configured, and ready for use, including hardware, software, and data refreshes.
• Perform regular environment health checks, capacity planning, and synchronisation between tiers to maintain consistency and data integrity.
• Manage landscape refreshes, system copies, and cloning processes using SAP tools like SWPM, HANA Studio, or third party automation scripts.
• Troubleshoot environment related issues with relevant teams, such as performance bottlenecks, connectivity problems, or configuration drifts, to support timely testing and go lives.
• Develop and enforce best practices for change management, version control, and audit compliance (e.g., SOX, GDPR).
• Collaborate with security teams to ensure environments meet access controls, encryption, and vulnerability standards.
• Analyse post release metrics to identify improvements in deployment speed, error rates, and overall system stability.
• Mentor junior team members and ensure training on release and environment management tools and processes.
• Work closely with development, QA, operations, and business units to align release schedules with project timelines and business needs.
• Provide clear release plan, status reports, dashboards, and recommendations to senior leadership on release progress and environment readiness.
• Participate in incident management and root cause analysis for production issues related to releases or environments.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in release management and environment provisioning within an environment of ERP, CRM and Integration platforms (ideally SAP).
• Proven track record managing complex SAP landscapes and integrations with non SAP systems.
• Hands on experience with SAP tools such as Solution Manager, TMS, CTS+, and environment management utilities.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices for SAP, ideally with Azure DevOps or SAP focused CI/CD solutions.
• Strong understanding of ITIL processes, particularly change, release, and configuration management.
• Experience working with senior stakeholders, working with cross functional teams and building and maintaining relationships.

Hard Skills

• release management
• environment provisioning
• SAP software management
• change management
• version control
• audit compliance
• capacity planning
• troubleshooting
• post release analysis
• DevOps practices

Soft Skills

• collaboration
• communication
• mentoring
• relationship building
• risk management
• problem solving
• planning
• coordination
• leadership
• stakeholder management