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Release Analyst SR
- ERCOT (Taylor, TX)
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At ERCOT, our diverse and dynamic work environment provides a platform on which employees can work together to build the future of the Texas power grid and wholesale market utilizing the latest technologies and resources. We encourage you to join our talented, dedicated workforce to develop world-class solutions for today and tomorrow’s energy challenges while learning new skills and growing your career.
ERCOT is committed to fostering inclusion at all levels of our company. It is the cornerstone of our corporate values of accountability, leadership, innovation, trust, and expertise. We know that individuals with a wide variety of talents, ideas, and experiences propel the innovation that drives our success. An inclusive and diverse workforce strengthens us and allows for a collaborative environment to solve the challenges that face our industry today and in the future.
JOB SUMMARY
Has oversight, administration, facilitation and technical support of changes that affect ERCOT facilities, infrastructure, and software. Ensures audit tracking, reliability, availability, correct functionality, system integrity, and risk mitigation. Plans, directs and coordinates release and change activities. Coordinates within the department, business units and with the IT operations and infrastructure teams to ensure that the systems run and interface smoothly. Maintains and enforces the processes and procedures that govern management of the IT Operations and/or Delivery Services Corporate Standards, Policy and Procedures. Ensures adherence to departmental policies and procedures providing consistency and repeatability in the final solution for service delivery. Ensures compliance with related internal Corporate Standards, Policies and Procedures, and Regulatory requirements. Ensures proper planning, deployment and decommission of changes to ERCOT’s facilities, infrastructure and software.
JOB DUTIES
+ Understands and applies principles, theories and concepts related to the profession and ERCOT's culture.
+ Exercises judgment within defined procedures and practices to determine appropriate action.
+ Impact is generally limited to specific assignments or projects.
+ May respond to inquiries and/or provide assistance and/or guidance to lower level workers.
ADDITIONAL JOB DUTIES
+ Reviews and processes IT Change Requests appropriately by following IT Delivery Services processes and procedures.
+ Works with the appropriate stakeholders to enhance inter-departmental communication and awareness of changes.
+ Creates deployment plans and performs plan reviews with stakeholders for application/infrastructure/site failover deployments.
+ Updates and maintains required systems documentation, following applicable documentation standards.
+ Ensures adherence and data integrity to departmental policies and procedures providing consistency in the final solution for service delivery.
+ Organize and lead effective release planning meetings, ensuring cross-functional alignment across application, infrastructure, and cloud teams.
+ Define and maintain a structured release calendar for applications and infrastructure, including OS patching, cloud deployments, middleware upgrades, and security updates.
+ Establish a consistent and predictable release cadence across IT applications, cloud platforms, and infrastructure components.
+ Occasional after hours and weekends support required.
+ Reviews and processes IT Change Requests appropriately by following ERCOT Change Management standards.
+ Works with the appropriate stakeholders to enhance inter-departmental communication and awareness of changes.
+ Generates and distributes key release metrics/status reports.
+ Facilitates the Change Advisory Board meetings, inclusive of meeting agenda and note documentation and distribution.
+ Supports ITIL, alignment of Service Desk, Change Management, Incident Management, and Problem Management processes.
+ Chairs Release Pipelines to establish priorities on changes by working with DEV/OPS/QA/Business/Infrastructure teams.
+ Manage end-to-end infrastructure/application release cycles, coordinating on-premises and/or cloud environments to minimize disruptions.
+ Ensure adherence to enterprise IT policies and security standards while executing application and infrastructure releases.
+ Track release deliverables, security compliance checks, and functional/security test approvals, ensuring production readiness.
+ Monitor infrastructure changes, including system upgrades, network modifications, storage enhancements, and patching cycles.
+ Provide oversight for OS patching, covering major and minor updates for Windows, Linux along with firmware updates for storage and network CIs and other enterprise systems.
+ Maintains and enforces the processes and procedures that govern management of the IT Delivery Services Corporate Standards, Policy and Procedures.
+ Promotes organizational awareness regarding IT Delivery Services processes and procedures.
+ Ensures compliance with related internal Corporate Standards, Policies and Procedures, and Regulatory requirements.
+ Assigns duties, responsibilities, scope of authority and coordinates activities of change and releases.
+ Verifies that all test results are updated and documented as required.
+ Gathers, consolidates and communicates change and release information.
+ Manages high volume and high frequency of complex changes and releases.
+ Directs assigned system site failovers via communication, coordination, plan review meetings, plan facilitation, and lessons learned meetings.
+ Attends Change Advisory Board, Daily IT Operations stand-ups to present information at meetings; coordinates release and migration planning meetings.
+ Drives new initiatives to achieve efficiencies by optimizing processes.
+ Collaborate with DevOps and IT System Reliability teams to integrate automated release pipelines, CI/CD best practices, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodologies.
+ Utilize IT automation tools (Ansible, Terraform) for infrastructure provisioning and release management.
Preferred Experience (all levels):
+ Experience in supporting on-prem and cloud applications
+ Experience with CI/CD tools and container orchestration (Docker)
+ Familiarity with blue/green deployment strategies
+ Proficient in ServiceNow modules related to Change and Release Management
+ Hands-on experience with Ansible, Terraform, or equivalent IaC tools
+ Scripting and automation experience (Python, Shell, PowerShell)
+ Hands-on experience with SQL and basic data analysis skills using Power BI and Databricks
+ Understanding of ITIL best practices
EXPERIENCE
+ Minimum 5 years of experience in IT Change & Release Management, specifically for infrastructure releases including OS patching, security updates, cloud deployments, and system upgrades required
+ Minimum 5 years of progressively responsible experience in system integration, infrastructure release management, or IT operations required
+ Hands-on experience in designing and managing CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps for automating infrastructure code deployments and patching activities preferred
+ Proficient in automating server build, configuration, and patching workflows using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or Puppet preferred
+ Integrated CI/CD pipelines with change approval workflows in ITSM platforms like ServiceNow to ensure governance and audit readiness preferred
+ Experience implementing automated rollback, validation, and post-deployment verification steps in CI/CD workflows for critical infrastructure changes preferred
+ Familiar with container-based deployment strategies (Docker, Kubernetes) and integrating them into CI/CD workflows preferred
+ Skilled in implementing pre- and post-deployment checks, automated testing, and monitoring hooks within CI/CD pipelines to ensure high release reliability preferred
EDUCATION
+ Bachelor's Degree: Business, Computer Science, Information Systems or related field (Required)
+ or a combination of education and experience that provides equivalent knowledge to a major in such fields is required.
CERTIFICATION
+ ITIL Foundation (Preferred)
+ Cloud Certification Azure (preferred)
The foregoing description reflects the minimum qualifications and the essential functions of the position that must be performed proficiently with or without reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities. It is not an exhaustive list of the duties expected to be performed, and management may, at its discretion, revise or require that other or different tasks be performed as assigned. This job description is not intended to create a contract of employment with ERCOT. Both ERCOT and the employee may exercise their employment-at-will rights at any time.
ERCOT is firmly committed to equal employment for all qualified persons without regard to race, sex, medical condition, religion, age, creed, national origin, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, ancestry, veteran status, genetic information or any other protected category under federal, state or local law.
Expected Salary Range:
$109,165 - $185,571
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