Technical Project & Release Manager

THE ROLE

We are seeking a Technical PM & Release Manager to be the guardian of delivery rigour and release quality across the Technology & Digital Services (TDS) team. This is a hybrid role that sits at the intersection of technical project management, delivery coordination, and release management — bringing structure, discipline, and accountability to how we build, test, and ship software across internal teams and third-party vendors.

You will work cross-functionally with software engineers, data engineers, cloud and enterprise architects, Product Managers, and Scrum Masters to ensure that delivery runs smoothly and that nothing enters our CI/CD pipeline unless it meets the standards we've set. You are not expected to write code or design architecture, our architect community will support you there, but you will need to understand technical concepts well enough to wrangle complex, multi-team delivery environments with confidence.

On the release side, you will co-own the release calendar with the Engineering Lead, drive the maturation of our CI/CD pipeline, and ensure that both internal teams and external vendors follow our release processes consistently and without exception. On the project side, you will coordinate delivery across workstreams, support Product Managers in managing technical timelines and dependencies, and provide a clear, consolidated view of progress to senior stakeholders.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Technical Project Management & Delivery Coordination

• Plan, coordinate, and track delivery across concurrent software, infrastructure, and vendor-led workstreams, maintaining a clear view of progress, risks, and dependencies at all times.
• Work closely with Product Managers and the Scrum Master to ensure delivery is on track, proactively surfacing blockers and facilitating their resolution without taking over squad-level ownership.
• Define and communicate what teams need to deliver in order for work to be considered ready to enter the CI/CD pipeline, working in alignment with the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done standards maintained by Product Management.
• Support Product Managers in managing coordination overhead across workstreams, acting as a quality and delivery expert within the TDS team.
• Collaborate with the data capability and Platform Owner to ensure data-related delivery workstreams are appropriately coordinated and integrated into the broader release schedule.
• Maintain accurate delivery documentation, including project plans, RAID logs, and status reports, ensuring senior stakeholders always have a clear and honest picture of delivery health.

Release Management

• Co-own the release calendar with the Engineering Lead, ensuring releases are planned, communicated, and executed in a controlled and predictable manner.
• Drive the maturation of our CI/CD pipeline, working alongside engineering teams to improve release frequency, reliability, and quality over time.
• Define, document, and enforce release processes and standards across internal engineering teams and external vendors, ensuring consistency and compliance at every stage of the release lifecycle.
• Manage release environments, coordinating across teams to ensure that development, test, staging, and production environments are correctly configured and ready ahead of each release.
• Own the go/no-go assessment for releases in partnership with the Engineering Lead, ensuring that all technical criteria are met before any release proceeds to production.
• Maintain a clear audit trail of all releases, including what was deployed, when, by whom, and the outcome — feeding into the CAB process as required.
• Lead the coordination of incident resolution when release-related or production issues arise, acting as the central point of contact across engineering teams, vendors, and architects to drive swift diagnosis and remediation, and ensuring incidents are properly documented and reviewed as part of a continuous improvement process.

CI/CD Pipeline Development

• Actively contribute to the design and ongoing improvement of the CI/CD pipeline, bringing project management rigour to what is currently an emerging capability within the organisation.
• Work with engineering teams to identify and resolve bottlenecks in the build, test, and deploy pipeline, tracking improvements over time.
• Ensure that pipeline standards are understood and followed by all teams (both internal and vendor) contributing to a consistent engineering culture across the TDS delivery function.

Vendor & Third-Party Delivery Management

• Ensure that third-party vendors adhere to TDS release processes, quality gates, and delivery standards, acting as the primary point of accountability for vendor compliance within the release lifecycle.
• Monitor vendor delivery performance and flag concerns to the relevant Product Manager and the Engineering Lead, providing clear evidence and recommended actions.
• Coordinate vendor delivery activities within the broader release calendar, managing dependencies between internal and external workstreams to avoid conflict or disruption.

Architecture & Technical Governance

• Develop sufficient understanding of the organisation's architecture, including software, data, cloud, and security, to coordinate delivery effectively across technical disciplines.
• Work closely with the architect community (system, data, cloud, enterprise, and security architects) to ensure that delivery decisions respect architectural standards and constraints.
• Escalate technical risks or architectural concerns identified during delivery to the appropriate architect or the Engineering Lead.

Stakeholder Communication & Reporting

• Provide regular, consolidated delivery and release status updates to the Head of Design & Engineering and wider TDS leadership.
• Facilitate cross-team delivery forums and release planning sessions, ensuring the right people are in the room and that decisions are made efficiently.
• Contribute to CAB meetings, providing accurate and timely information on upcoming releases to support informed change advisory decisions.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

To be successful in this role, you will demonstrate:

• Strong technical project management skills, with the ability to coordinate complex, multi-team delivery environments involving internal squads and external vendors.
• Deep understanding of release management principles, including CI/CD pipelines, environment management, release scheduling, and quality gates.
• Strong technical fluency, able to engage meaningfully with architects and engineers on software, infrastructure, and cloud topics without needing to be a practitioner.
• Excellent understanding of agile delivery practices, with experience working alongside Scrum Masters and Product Managers in a cross-functional squad model.
• Strong influencing skills, able to hold internal teams and vendors accountable to standards without direct line management authority.
• Highly organised, with strong planning, prioritisation, and risk management skills across concurrent workstreams.
• Clear and confident communicator, able to translate technical delivery status into plain language for non-technical stakeholders.
• Resilient and pragmatic, comfortable operating in a maturing delivery environment and driving improvement incrementally.
• Delivery focus with strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Passion for sustainability and the mission to lead the transition to clean energy.
• Commitment to NextEnergy Group's values: be a leader, build trust, be responsible, be innovative, and 'Bring your Alpha'.

EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS 

• 5–8 years of experience in a technical project management, delivery management, or release management role within a software or technology delivery environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing release processes and CI/CD pipelines, ideally including contributing to their design and maturation.
• Proven track record of coordinating delivery across internal engineering teams and third-party vendors simultaneously.
• Experience working in an agile delivery environment, with a strong understanding of how project management and release management integrate with squad-based ways of working, including iterative sprint-based release cycles, continuous delivery practices, and the management of release trains across multiple agile teams.
• Solid understanding of software architecture, cloud infrastructure, and data platform concepts — sufficient to coordinate effectively across technical disciplines.
• Experience working with Azure DevOps or equivalent tools for project tracking, pipeline management, and release coordination.
• Familiarity with Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Architectural Review Board (ARB) processes and how release management feeds into change and technical governance.
• Experience working in a regulated industry (e.g. energy, finance, utilities, or similar) is desirable.
• Familiarity with structured project management methodologies (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, or equivalent) is desirable, particularly in the context of stage gate processes and managing the delivery lifecycle of third-party vendors operating outside of an agile framework.
• The right to work in the UK.

WHAT WE OFFER 

• A busy role in a supportive team, with plenty of opportunities to learn
• International scope – we operate in over 8 countries
• Hybrid working – we will need you in the central London (Mayfair) office at least twice a week, but you will normally be able to work remotely for the remainder of the week
• 30 days’ holiday per year (3 of which are taken during the festive shutdown in December)
• Private pension
• BUPA Healthcare for you and qualifying dependents
• Cycle to work and electric vehicle leasing schemes
• Annual discretionary bonus.

HOW TO APPLY

If you are interested in this opportunity, please follow the link to apply or send your application to [email protected]. If you have been shortlisted for the next stage, we will be in contact within 14 days. 

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DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Our approach to diversity and inclusion is a natural extension of our values. Our entrepreneurial culture inspires us to try new things, be open to different viewpoints and be bold. Our Group is committed to cultivating and preserving a culture of connectedness that values difference and gives space for individual expression. The collective sum of our individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, innovation, self-expression, talent and hard work form the bedrock of who we are and who we aspire to be.

We are committed to equal employment and advancement opportunity irrespective of race, color, ancestry, social background, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability and gender identity.

ABOUT US 

NextEnergy Group was founded in 2007 to become a leading market participant in the international solar sector.  Since its inception, it has been active in the development, construction, and ownership of solar assets across multiple jurisdictions.  NextEnergy Group operates via its three business units: NextEnergy Capital (Investment Management), WiseEnergy (Operating Asset Management), and Starlight (Asset Development).

NextEnergy Capital manages the Group's investment activities and has invested in over 520 solar plants, exceeding 2GW in capacity across its institutional funds.

• NextEnergy Solar Fund (NESF): Listed on the London Stock Exchange, NESF manages 102 solar and energy storage assets in the UK and Italy, with a total installed capacity of 983MW and a gross asset value of £1,014m.
• NextPower II (NPII): A private fund of 105 solar plants (149MW) focused on Italy, successfully divested in January 2022, delivering net IRRs exceeding its 10-12% target.
• NextPower III ESG (NPIII ESG): A private fund targeting solar infrastructure in OECD countries (e.g., US, Spain, Italy), with $896m raised, exceeding its $750m target.
• NextPower UK ESG (NPUK ESG): A private fund dedicated to new-build solar plants in the UK, with ~£600m raised.
• NextPower V ESG (NPV ESG): A private OECD solar fund investing in solar and adjacent technologies like battery storage. To date, it has raised $745m, targeting $1.5bn ($2bn ceiling).

WiseEnergy® is NextEnergy Group’s operating asset manager.  WiseEnergy is a leading specialist operating asset manager in the solar sector.  Since its founding, WiseEnergy has provided solar asset management, monitoring, technical due diligence and under construction services to over 1,500 utility-scale solar power plants with an installed total capacity in excess of 3.4 GW.  WiseEnergy clients comprise leading banks and equity financiers in the energy and infrastructure sector. 

Starlight is NextEnergy Group’s development company that is active in the development phase of solar projects.  It has developed over 100 utility-scale projects internationally and continues to progress a large pipeline of c.10GW of both green and brownfield project developments across global geographies.

NextSTEP is the venture capital fund of NextEnergy Group, dedicated to investing in innovative startups in the field of environmental sustainability. The fund primarily focuses on investments in Italy and the United Kingdom but also extends its reach to the rest of Europe and the United States, targeting startups in the pre-seed and seed stages. NextSTEP pays particular attention to emerging entities from incubators, startup accelerators, universities, and research centers, supporting projects that address global challenges in crucial areas such as Climate Change, Energy Transition, CO2 Capture and Sequestration, Circular Economy, Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Mobility, Sustainable Fashion, Waste Management, Water and much more.

NextEnergy Foundation is a non-profit organisation founded in 2016 by the NextEnergy Group that operates internationally and whose mission is to proactively participate in the global effort to reduce carbon emissions by providing clean energy sources in regions where they are not yet available and thereby contributing to poverty reduction. As the main sponsor of this foundation, the NextEnergy Group donates at least 5% of its consolidated net profits each year. The NextEnergy Foundation has no overhead costs and therefore 100% of the funds raised go to donations for the various projects. Since 2016, in 8 years of operation the foundation has donated more than £1.2 million, supporting over 30 projects in 27 different countries around the world.