Release Manager - Platforms and Integrations

Solutions 360, the technology and services company of MDS Group, is recruiting a Release Manager - Platforms and Integrations.

The Release Manager is responsible for stable non-production environments, controlled releases, and the automation that safely promotes change into production. The role combines hands-on Azure DevOps and Terraform engineering with cross-functional coordination to ensure environments, integrations, readiness evidence, recovery arrangements, and operational handovers are complete at each release stage.

Working with engineering, QA, infrastructure, operations, InfoSec, and business teams, the Release Manager coordinates release readiness, deployment, recovery, and operational handover. While these teams retain ownership of solution design, testing, approvals, and operational acceptance, the Release Manager may halt or escalate a release when readiness evidence is incomplete or risks remain unresolved.

The role owns Vantage platform pipelines across applications, integrations, infrastructure, environments, testing, security, migration, release, rollback, and teardown, including KYC Core, D&B, LexisNexis, email ingestion, and identity services. Priorities and engineering standards are defined with the relevant platform owners.

Key Responsibilities

Non-Production Environment Stability and Readiness

· Own the readiness and availability of long-lived development, QA and test, UAT, integration, staging and pre-production environments, and of temporary environments where applicable.

· Plan and deliver ServiceNow upgrades and patching, including impact assessment, testing and issue resolution;

· Manage instance cloning and environment readiness across development, test and production;

· Apply and promote clear platform standards to keep the environment stable, supportable and maintainable;

· Promote and support the use of ServiceNow within the IT teams and support usage and adoption.

Release Planning and Readiness

· Maintain the release calendar, agreed scope, dependency map and environment schedule for application, integration, data and infrastructure changes.

· Confirm accountable owners, release windows, communication plans and go/no-go authority. Resolve scheduling conflicts and escalate delivery risks before any production release.

· Agree proportionate readiness gates covering approved scope and artefacts, regression and business UAT evidence, security findings, environment readiness, migration compatibility, monitoring and rehearsed recovery. Obtain change approval and operational acceptance from the accountable teams, and escalate unresolved risks rather than bypassing controls.

Pipeline Ownership and Hands-On Engineering

· Own the inventory, engineering standards and readiness of the Vantage pipelines, ensuring each has a named owner and defined support arrangements. Build, troubleshoot and improve Azure DevOps pipelines and reusable templates, including environment provisioning, refresh and teardown, applying the same controls to long-lived and temporary environments.

· Maintain versioned artefacts, controlled promotion, secure configuration and secrets handling, approvals and execution evidence. Where used, support Docker builds, Helm package publication and GitOps deployment and rollback. Integrate Snyk checks for code, open-source components and infrastructure as code, applying gates agreed with engineering and InfoSec.

Terraform Environment Lifecycle

· Create, configure and refresh environments through reusable, version-controlled Terraform modules and reviewed plan and apply pipelines. Work with infrastructure teams to manage remote state, locking, permissions and drift. Where required, coordinate Vantage, SQL Server, GXB and OpenTWINS, using safely seeded products, users and document templates with synthetic or masked data.

· Own safe environment deletion through approved destroy and teardown pipelines, verifying the target environment and protecting shared and production resources and data. Maintain owner, purpose and cost tags, agreed lifetimes and authorised extensions. Verify resource cleanup, retention and credential revocation, then reconcile state and residual costs. Retire long-lived environments only through approved lifecycle decisions, never through expiry-driven deletion.

Dependency-Aware Deployment and Recovery

· Execute approved deployments and compatible configuration and data migrations in the required dependency order, sequencing third-party APIs, backend services and Vantage core accordingly. Verify pipeline stages, health endpoints and critical-journey smoke tests before progressing to the next stage.

· Rehearse repeatable rollback using known-good artefacts and versioned configuration, reversing the original deployment sequence where appropriate and validating data compatibility and recovery. Agree backout criteria and decision authority with the change owner and the engineering and operations leads, then confirm restored service health and communicate the outcome.

Integration Reliability and Assurance

Work with engineering, QA and integration owners to validate API contracts, compatibility, identity and access changes, error handling and end-to-end journeys. Coordinate regression coverage for third-party checks, email ingestion and dependent services, allowing for supplier constraints. Resolve integration defects and release blockers, and align consolidation and decommissioning with supported dependencies and service-continuity requirements.

Post-release operations and governance

Agree post-release monitoring arrangements with operations, using Application Insights, health checks, logs and business journeys. During incidents, coordinate triage, recovery and communications while preserving the incident commander’s authority. Work with engineering and problem management to address recurring faults. Maintain runbooks, approval evidence and operational handovers, apply lessons learned to pipelines and readiness controls, and support disaster recovery and business continuity exercises.

Experience and Working Relationships

Essential Skills and Experience

· Proven release management across multiple teams and services, balancing delivery, operational readiness and risk through clear communication and disciplined change control.

· Experience managing stable, actively maintained non-production environments, including capacity, configuration and drift, safe test data, access, secrets and certificates. Ability to diagnose and resolve environment and production faults using logs, metrics and health checks, supported by effective runbooks.

· Hands-on Terraform experience across environment creation, refresh and safe teardown, evidenced by reusable modules, reviewed plan, apply and destroy pipelines, remote-state management and locking, drift control and lifecycle safeguards.

· Strong CI/CD, scripting, Azure DevOps and Git skills, with the ability to troubleshoot pipelines and deliver maintainable automation, versioned artefacts and controlled promotion.

· Experience releasing APIs and integrations, including dependency and configuration compatibility, data migrations, regression and UAT evidence, and repeatable rollback or recovery.

· Sound judgement under pressure, with the ability to challenge incomplete readiness evidence, coordinate specialists and explain technical risk to business stakeholders.

Desirable Experience

· Experience with GitOps, Docker, Helm, Snyk and Application Insights, or closely comparable tools, and with provisioning temporary environments and seeding masked test data.

· Exposure to KYC or other regulated financial-services integrations, including SQL Server, GXB or OpenTWINS. Familiarity with cost control, disaster recovery and business continuity exercises.

Key Working Relationships

· Partner with Vantage product and platform owners, application and integration engineers, DevOps and infrastructure teams, QA and business UAT representatives. Work with InfoSec, operations, the service desk and change management on controls, acceptance, incidents and approvals, and coordinate dependencies with suppliers and third-party owners.

About us

We began in Portugal 40 years ago. Since then, we focus on specialisation and knowledge, on an international network, on people and on technology. We have innovated, grown and become a multinational group specialising in insurance and risk consulting.
With an active presence in 11 countries – Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Angola, Mozambique, Switzerland, Malta, Chile, Cyprus, Mexico and USA – we also operate around the world through Brokerslink, a global broking company, founded by MDS in 2004. Brokerslink manages a network of brokers and speciality risk and consulting firms located in 133 countries.
We are part of The Ardonagh Group, the world’s largest independent broking group in the United Kingdom and one of the top 20 brokers in the world, posting revenue over USD$1.5Bn, employing 11,000+ people across 250 offices. This operation amplifies our access to specialist resources, technology, and the ability to offer innovative solutions as well as the highest standards of service to our customers anywhere in the world.

Equal Opportunity Employer

MDS ensures that all applications are assessed fairly and impartially, based solely on the candidate’s skills and profile, guaranteeing a recruitment process free from any form of discrimination.

#MDS