D365 F&O Release Engineer

Job Description
Job title: Platform Reliability + Release Engineer
Directorate: Group CTO
Department: Workplace IT
Reports to: Platform Reliability + Release Manager
Salary:  Up to £40,000 per annum (negotiable based on experience) + comprehensive benefits package
Hours: 35 hours per week
Contract: Permanent
Reports into: Platform Reliability + Release Engineer (FinSys)
Location: Hybrid - A blend of working from home and your nominated hub office, we have hubs in London, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford. Specific patterns for working in the office are not mandated, and the frequency of time worked in the office is agreed with your manager. Meeting in person is something we value so you may need to travel on occasion to any of our hub offices.

About the role:
Jisc operates as a number of directorates, each focusing on particular activities. This role is within the Group CTO directorate. We develop new products to meet the needs of our members now and in the future, and provide technology leadership within the organisation and to our members and customers. Most of Jisc's technical resource and capability sits within our directorate, allowing us to focus on delivering Jisc's digital vision for members and customers.
There are a number of departments which make up the Group CTO directorate, and this role is within Workplace IT, in the FinSys team.
Platform; in this role we define Platform as the hardware and software used to deliver service(s) to our customers.
This role incorporates aspects of the IT industry roles ‘Systems Reliability Engineer’ and ‘DevOps Release Engineer’.

The purpose of this role is to:
 Minimise unplanned interruption of services and to reduce the direct and indirect costs (such as brand/ reputational damage) of Platform failures.
 Ensure efficient transition of stable, quality changes (new apps or updates) from development to the production (live) environment.

For the assigned Platform(s), this role is responsible for:

 Supporting the reliability and uptime; and
 Supporting all aspects of the release management lifecycle; and
This role supports the overall release and environment strategy for the Platform(s) at Jisc, driving continuous improvement of these processes to optimise efficiency and quality. The role supports all aspects of the release management lifecycle to deliver effective change.
They work closely with the ‘Platform Reliability and Release Manager’ and development teams to facilitate timely releases and handle responsibilities such as continuous improvement to process including release guidelines and maintaining documentation.
The role supports the day to day running and integrity of the Jisc FinSys (Finance Systems Platform). Primary working knowledge will centre on the Microsoft (D365) and SAP (Concur) platforms.

Responsibilities also cover the various associated tooling and related infrastructure.
This role works closely with a number of teams including:
 Platform reliability and release managers and engineers; to develop and deliver consistent, best practice across internal IT to successfully manage our Platforms and minimise disruption.
 Quality and assurance function to contribute to guidelines and best practice for a structured quality (testing) and assurance process enabling issues to be caught and addressed before they impact customers.
 Development teams to improve quality of release – from change/ product through to the launch process, capturing and resolving issues in advance of deployment.
 Information security team to ensure known vulnerabilities are addressed in-line with the policy(s) and any associated security concerns to protect the Platform(s) and services.

Key responsibilities and deliverables
 Support the day-to-day running and integrity of the Platform(s) – including planning and managing short-term stability and long-term scalability and bridging the gap between development and operations, maintaining large-scale Platforms effectively.
 Support the leveraging of software engineering practices to automate operational tasks, for example, managing production systems, handling incidents and responding to emergencies
 Support the consistent delivery or timely releases to drive customer satisfaction and adoption, delivering new features, improvements, and bug fixes promptly and thereby enhancing the overall experience with
the Platforms.
 Assess risks associated with releases and develop mitigation plans to minimize impact on the business.
 Support the change control process for development and release readiness criteria and ensure all changes meet criteria prior to deployment.
 Support the release communication with the stakeholder’s ensuring expectations are managed and benefits of change promoted.
 Support the monitoring and managing all

Platform environments, including:

o maintenance activities
o leading upgrades
o security/ vulnerability patches
o synchronising sandbox metadata and appropriate data sets
o maintaining and refreshing sandboxes and repositories

 Responsible for the tooling associated with this role, including maintenance, support and training.

 Continually work towards making improvements through maintaining documenting, proactively resolving or removing release issues and developing plans to improve process or automation.
 Act as single point of contact for all the teams in terms of schedule, deployment, and process to be followed.

Experience
Need to have
 Previous experience in a role responsible for managing releases and environments (some codal development, version release, sandbox, testing and production) for D365 (F&O).
 Demonstratable experience with:

o D365 (F&O) configuration including workflows, profiles, permission sets, permission set groups, lifecycle service management and version control
o Knowledge of source control systems (e.g.MS Azure DevOps (ADO), release branching strategies, continuous integration pipelines for moving code across environments.

 Demonstratable experience in some of the following related areas:
o Troubleshooting, diagnosis, and problem solving
o Change management/ change advisory board (CAB)
o Sandbox management and data refresh strategies
o Data migration between environments
o Deployment of meta-data changes between environments
o Release management/ CI/CD tools and concepts
 Demonstratable experience in (some of) the following technologies:

o Scripting development language (C# .Net)
o Database management (Odata\Dataverse\Synapse Datalink)
o Use of Power Platform, in particular designing, developing and maintaining Power
Automate Flows
o DevOps tooling and synergy with JIRA for sprint\release alignment

Nice to have
 Demonstratable experience in the following technologies:
o Microsoft Power Automate and Power Platform
o Microsoft Power BI (with integration into cloud Data Lake (e.g. Synapse DataLink)

Skills & personal qualities
Need to have
 Ability to create, develop and maintain policies, processes and procedures.
 Ability to manage release communications across development projects, preparing release notes, raising
CAB requests.
 Ability to learn new software and/or business process techniques and applying them to solve business problems.
 Understanding of the following frameworks:
o Agile and waterfall
o DevOps/ DevSecOps
o Release Management Lifecycle
o Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
o ITIL v4
o Source control systems

 Understanding of handling of personal and confidential data in a commercial setting.
 Understanding of the commercial uses and value associated with Salesforce.
Qualifications & training
Need to have
 Evidence of professional development
Nice to have
 Certified: MB 700 Solution Architect for Finance and Operations. (MB700)
 Foundation in ITIL V4 (Service Value Chain and Guiding Principles) 

Driving licence required: No
On-call / Shifts: No

We are constantly changing and evolving at Jisc, so this job description just gives a flavour of what the role involves. It will change as our operations develop.