Head of Development Management

About MMU

Our Purpose

Transforming lives through the power of education and research.

Our Ambition

We will harness our creativity and confidence to enrich students lives, raise the impact of our excellent education and research and project its application to Manchester and the world.

About Software Engineering:

Customer and future focused, we build, buy, configure and enhance enterprise scale software and systems to solve unique problems and support mission critical functions within the university enabling it to achieve its strategic goals. We ensure our systems and data are highly resilient, available, and secure and work collaboratively with our colleagues within IT & Digital and across the wider university to deliver best in class products and services.

About the role:

Development Management is a key part of Software Engineering which will have authority to establish and enforce governance across all areas of the function ensuring test, release and environment management best practise is adopted and adhered to.

What you will be doing:

• Creating a development management function which will provide governance and have authority across the whole of Software Engineering for test, release and environment management.
• Mature the release, test and environment management principles, practises and processes
• Ensure consistent release management processes are adopted and applied across all of Software Engineering
• Ensure test automation is utilised in a cost effective and efficient manner
• Ensure appropriate tooling for workload management (e.g. JIRA, DevOps), test management, test automation and release and environment management are selected and adopted by Software Engineering teams

What you'll bring to the table:

• Specialist knowledge in release, test and environment management practises and tooling
• Experience managing team(s) of test analysts, automation test engineers and release managers
• Experience defining suitable quality metrics and processes to support go/no go decisions
• Understanding and experience working with teams using Agile Software Development practises (particularly SCRUM)

Manchester Metropolitan University is committed to supporting the rights, responsibilities, dignity, health and wellbeing of staff and students through our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. We promote applications from all sections of the community, irrespective of background, belief or identity, recognising the benefits that a diverse organisation can bring. We particularly encourage applications from Black and Minority Ethnic candidates, who we recognise are underrepresented in this area. We recognise the benefits and importance of an environment that supports flexible working and are open to conversations about this throughout the application process.

In recognition of staff contributions to the University's achievements during the 2021/2022 academic year, an additional discretionary payment of 2% per annum will be added to your salary until 31/07/23 in order to ensure consistency amongst existing and incoming staff. This additional 2% will be paid pro rata in equal monthly installments, on top of your salary each month until 31/07/23.