Agile Release Engineer

Who we are

interactive investor is an award-winning investment platform that puts its customers in control of their financial future.

We’ve been helping investors for nearly 30 years. We’ve seen market highs and lows and been resilient throughout. We’re now the UK’s number one flat-fee investment platform, with assets under administration approaching £80 billion and over 500,000 customers.

For a simple, flat monthly fee we provide a secure home for your pensions, ISAs and investments. We offer a wide choice of over 20,000 UK and international investment options, including shares, funds, trusts and ETFs.

We also bring impartial, expert content from our award-winning financial journalists, highly engaged community of investors, and daily newsletters and insights.

Purpose Of Role

Reporting to the Senior Scrum Master, the Agile Release Engineer is responsible for supporting all activities required to ensure oversight, management and control of squad-based releases through development, QA and live.

Working closely with the Senior Scrum Master, and the delivery team (including but not limited to Engineering Managers, Programme Managers, Project Managers, Product Managers, QA managers and Scrum Masters) the Agile Release Engineer will support the planning of ii’s release schedule across assigned technologies, managing inter-dependencies both from a technical perspective but also business readiness.

The focus of this role is delivery of change through agile CI/CD pipeline delivery, but also works closely with the Service Management Analyst and Implementation Coordinator to ensure alignment and coordination across the entire portfolio.

Key Responsibilities

• As directed by the Senior Scrum Master, work with Project Managers, Product Managers and Scrum Masters to support the management of ii’s Agile release schedule across Programmes, Projects, Agile Delivery Squads and Infrastructure Teams.
• Support the identification and management of interdependencies or risks between all release types and the overall change pipeline, ensuring appropriate communication, reporting and control including escalation to the Senior Scrum Master as required.
• Support the identification and management of squad change concentration risk through ensuring the volume of change impacting different customer segments and internal departments over given periods of time is acceptable and consumable.
• Understand end enforce ii’s change and release control standards and policies, ensuring that while change is released safely, it is also done in a pragmatic way that doesn’t stifle our rate of change and is within the company risk appetite.
• As assigned by the Senior Scrum Master, pro-actively manage ii’s CI/CD development and test environments working with technical teams to establish best practice, address BAU issues and ensure optimal availability to support the change delivery life cycle.
• As assigned by the Senior Scrum Master, work with each technology team to manage the CI/CD pipelines through the identification and management of deployment backlog, risks and dependencies.
• As assigned by the Senior Scrum Master, co-ordinate regular deployments of ii’s mobile applications across agile delivery squads.
• As assigned by the Senior Scrum Master, support implementation management where a change or series of changes touches on multiple platforms with a number of both technical and non-technical teams involved.
• Contribute to the establishment and management of best practice release management processes, tools, standards and reports
• Contribute to the establishment of improved processes to enhance release delivery quality and to improve visibility/performance across the portfolio of projects/activities.
• Contribute to a knowledge management platform and library structure to create, store, and share best practices and documentation from releases.
• Ensure timely notification of issues/problems and make recommendations for resolution to release & project teams and resolve and/or escalate testing issues where required.
• Contribute towards a release repository and manage key information such as build and release procedures, dependencies, and notification lists.
• Continuously enhance knowledge/expertise in own area and keep current with trends/developments and develop expertise in ii services, applications, infrastructure, analytical tools and techniques that can contribute to effective change delivery.
• Support any Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews as required.
• Contribute to the clear and available reporting on test environment use for agile delivery, including details of any project or workstream actively using any environment. Additionally, this includes ensuring details of code/build versions are also clearly evidenced and available to view at any time.
• For any test environment issues logged - working with own team, Product Analysts, IT Support areas, Development and QA testing to triage, resolve, retest and close issues in a timely manner – helping to maintain test environments as fit for purpose. This also includes being able to provide clear reporting on issues as required.

Requirements

Skills & Experience Required:

Planning and Release Management

Hands-on experience with Agile/adaptive delivery models, ideally in large, complex environments.

Proven knowledge of Scrum and Kanban delivery gained from experience working in and agile environment

Knowledge of SAFe and implementation of agile release trains and managing release schedules across multiple squads..

Ability to apply strategic improvements to process remove/manage risks and introduce efficiencies to ways of working

Excellent Communicate skills at all levels of the organisation

Work to tight deadlines, escalate and prioritise workloads where required

Confidently deliver information to mixed audiences

Conflict resolution, with the ability to successfully negotiate and influence.

Stakeholder Management to senior levels

Good working knowledge of MS Word and MS Excel, MS Project preferred but not essential

Strong understanding and experience working with workflow collaboration tools such as Jira or Confluence

Knowledge of the Financial Services industry

Good understanding of technology and systems architecture

Excellent understanding of development lifecycle, specifically CI/CD

An understanding of release and project delivery lifecycles

Benefits

Group Personal Pension Plan – 8% employer contribution and 4% employee contribution

Life Assurance and Group Income Protection

Private Medical Insurance – Provided by Bupa

25 Days Annual Leave, plus bank holidays

Staff Discounts on our investment products

Personal & Well-being Fund – Supporting your physical and mental wellness

Retail Discounts – Savings at a wide range of high street and online retailers

Voluntary Flexible Benefits – Tailor your benefits to suit your lifestyle