Sr. Software Engineer (SAP)

Microsoft IT is for those IT professionals and business technology professionals who want to be strategic partners to the business and be the first place to create innovative solutions using all of Microsoft’s products and services. Microsoft IT provides career growth opportunities, a rewarding and flexible work environment so you can better integrate professional and personal life. Unlike other IT organizations, Microsoft IT employees make global impact on thousands of customers and thousands of employees who use Microsoft software and services.

The SAP Release Manager owns the IT software development lifecycle governing the development, testing, and deployment of software changes across the SAP landscape. This includes scheduling, coordinating, and managing quarterly, monthly, and ad-hoc releases that impact multiple lines of business across Microsoft. Software releases can include SAP delivered updates and patches, custom development and configuration, or production maintenance and bug fixes. You will be responsible for implementing and managing release processes for the progression of code in sandbox, development, test, and production environments.

The Release Manager works collaboratively with all participants in software development projects, enhancements, and production maintenance. This position also works with IT management to improve the software engineering processes and practices associated with continuously building, deploying, and updating software and environments. The Release Manager ensures software delivery best practices and compliance controls are met with every release. The Release Manager establishes a cadence for deployments that fit both business need and technical IT constraints. This cadence is coordinated across all of Microsoft IT including deployment windows, testing timelines, test system refreshes, and mitigating major cross-team dependencies, risks, and issues.

The Release Manager also owns the toolset used by software engineering teams for SAP change and transport management.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Plan, document, and communicate the year-over-year release cadence across the IT organization

• Manage risks and resolve issues that affect release scope, schedule, or quality

• Measure and monitor progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time

• Coordinate release content and effort based on the service request backlog, pending service requests, third party applications, or operating system updates

• Communicate all key project plans, commitments, or changes that impact any other stakeholder for each release

• Manage relationships and coordinate work between different teams in different locations and geographies around the world

• Conduct release readiness reviews, milestone reviews, and business go/no-go reviews

• Facilitate the production of implementation plans

• Enable automated dashboard release status reporting highlighting Microsoft technologies Communicate release details and schedules to the business stakeholders as required

• Negotiate, plan and manage all release activities

• Mitigate technical SAP transport constraints, sequencing, and dependencies for deployments across the SAP platform

• Maintains the release schedule for all core services and ensure alignment across key partners and vendors

• Continually work towards making improvements in the release process

• Lead and co-ordinate the go-live activities including the execution of step-by-step deployment plans

• Facilitate Change Approval Board meetings to discuss release scope, align deployment resources, validate readiness, and uncover any constraints

• Maintains SAP transport and change management applications used to provide transparency as to the build and test contents of every release

• Partner with internal and external compliance control teams or auditors to ensure segregation of duties, SOX controls, and internal MSIT controls are met throughout the release lifecycle

• Researches new software development and configuration management methodologies and technologies and analyzes their application to current configuration management needs

Required Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree or above in Computer Science or other related area,

• Minimum of 5+ years experience in establishing/governing and improving release management processes,

• Experience with ERP implementation as integration/cutover Lead,

• Experience with multiple full life cycle of SAP implementations as release manager for Production Support / Implementation activities,

• Experienced in planning of the activities for various phases of SAP implementations

Preferred Experience:

• SAP Project Management, RealTech tools, SAP BASIS

• SAP Release Management, CHARM, CTS+, Change Management,

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to askstaff@microsoft.com.