Environment & Release Manager

Environment & Release Manager

Duration: 6 Month contract

Contract Type: Inside IR35 Day Rate

Location: Remote - with the occasional visit to Reading when required

We’re looking for an Environment & Release Manager to join us on an initial 6 month contract, as the Environment & Release Manager, you will own the end-to-end release lifecycle and the full spectrum of technology environment management. Working at the intersection of delivery, operations, and technology, this role ensures software changes reach production safely and predictably, while maintaining a well-governed, cost-optimised environment landscape across route to live systems.

You will ensure quality new products and deliver continuous value by enabling the delivery of the product roadmap.

What You’ll Do:

We want you to feel challenged and inspired. Here, you’ll develop your skills across a range of responsibilities:

Release Management

• Own and manage the full release lifecycle from planning through deployment and post-release support, ensuring releases are delivered on time, to scope, and with quality.
• Define, govern, and continuously improve release and deployment policies, standards, and procedures aligned to ITIL and Lean principles.
• Develop and maintain a release calendar with clear milestones, dependencies, and communication touchpoints for all stakeholders.
• Coordinate with project teams, QA, support teams, and technology leads to define release criteria, confirm readiness, and manage release gates.
• Identify and manage release dependencies and risks, resolving issues that affect scope, schedule, or quality before they impact delivery.
• Collaborate with development and DevOps teams to drive automation and tooling across release and deployment processes, supporting CI/CD maturity.
• Create and maintain standard deployment checklists and runbooks, ensuring consistency and repeatability across all release events.
• Track, analyse, and present release metrics identifying trends and proposing solutions; ensure metrics are aligned with business goals and planning horizons

Environment Management

• Oversee the full environment lifecycle across Development, SIT,UAT, Pre-Production, and Production — spanning on-premises ERP systems and modern cloud environments.
• Efficiently manage and fulfil requests for new and existing environments, ensuring timely provisioning that supports project timelines and team needs.
• Analyse the current environment landscape and identify opportunities to consolidate, rationalise, and standardise, reducing complexity and cost.
• Develop and execute a comprehensive environment strategy focused on cost efficiency, demand fulfilment, and adherence to best practices.
• Monitor, forecast, and actively manage environment-related costs; align provisioning and scheduling with demand to eliminate waste.
• Build and embed automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices to deliver scalable, consistent, and repeatable environment provisioning.
• Partner with integration and microservice delivery teams to understand environment demand, ensure environments are fit for purpose, and align provisioning to support fast, iterative delivery cycles.

Governance, Security & Stakeholders

• Ensure robust security practices across all environments, including proactive identification, prioritisation, and remediation of vulnerabilities.
• Maintain compliance with industry standards, audit requirements, and internal change and configuration management policies.
• Own the resolution of incidents and escalations across environments and releases, ensuring timely, transparent stakeholder communication.
• Act as the key liaison between delivery teams and senior stakeholders, translating complex technical issues into clear, actionable updates.
• Work closely with partners and vendors to understand requirements, drive performance, and ensure environment and release capability meets expectations.
• Champion a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, proactively challenging the status quo to enhance service delivery and operational excellence.
• Promote technology, values and ways of working within the team and wider software engineering community.

What You’ll Bring

• Here at Primark, we want everyone to feel valued – so please bring your authentic self to work, of course with some other key experience and abilities for this role in particular:
• 10+ years in a technology environment, with at least 5 years in release management, environment management, or a closely related role, ideally within a complex, fast-paced industry such as retail.
• Drive the adoption of Environment as a Service (EaaS) principles, enabling self-service, on-demand environment provisioning that reduces lead times and empowers delivery teams to move faster.
• Strong understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), QA methodologies, and ITIL-based change, configuration, and release management.
• Demonstrated ability to rationalise environment landscapes and develop and execute strategic optimisation plans.
• Experience with release automation tools, CI/CD pipelines, and modern delivery toolchains.
• Familiarity with virtualisation, cloud platforms, and containerisation technologies.
• Proven ability to coordinate cross-functional teams and manage complex, concurrent release schedules.
• Exceptional organisational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities and deliver under pressure.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a track record of effective stakeholder management at all levels — including senior business stakeholders and external partners.
• Commercial awareness and experience working with vendors and technology partners, including contract and performance management.
• A proactive, problem-solving mindset with a strong commitment to automation, standardisation, and continuous improvement.
• Risk management experience across both technical and delivery domains.

Please note, to be considered for this role we can only accept candidates who are happy to work through an umbrella company, this is non-negotiable.

If the above is of interest to you then please apply and we can discuss the next steps in detail.