Dynamics of the Role

At TransUnion, we have a welcoming and energetic environment that encourages collaboration and innovation we’re consistently exploring new technologies and tools to be agile. This environment gives our people the opportunity to hone current skills and build new capabilities, while discovering their genius.

Come be a part of our team – you’ll work with great people, pioneering products and cutting-edge technology.

Job Summary

Transunion Africa is looking for an experienced Release Train Engineer (RTE) who can bring dynamic and critical thinking to our agile delivery processes and partner with business and IT leadership to drive business value.

How You’ll Contribute

At the highest level, the following impact will be sought:

Strategic:

• Serve as the Release Train Engineer for the TU Africa (TUA) Agile Release Train (ART): facilitate planning and execution of the PI for the ART, as well as relentless improvement at the ART level
• Aligns and calibrates the organization’s technology deployment strategy with its business strategy. Incorporates, understands, and blends the functions of the division with the needs and requirements of the organization to effectively achieve goals and objectives.
• Improve existing capabilities by improving processes, tooling or investment in key assets to enable those capabilities to operate more efficiently.
• Knowledge of agile delivery and a vision of what efficient agile delivery looks like and what tools/processes need to be put in place in order to support that vision.
• Drive definition, documentation and implementation of a standard way of work, key agile processes, reporting and tool utilization across the ART
• Drive process improvements for the TUA ART on the Scaled Agile Framework to improve the flow. Optimize flow and establish KPI’s to appropriately measure flow.

People:

• Work with and build relationships with clients and business stakeholders including product owners, scrum masters, architects, technology leads, operations leads, InfoSec leads and infrastructure leads.
• Working closely with the Release Manager to build and maintain motivated and high performing agile delivery teams, agree backlog items and work prioritization.
• A customer centric focus – seeking to understand customer perception and experience of our products and services and how to improve this through consistent use of leading technologies, availability of appropriate information and appropriate internal prioritization and focus.
• Identify other teams that will interact closely with or have dependencies to / from the build teams and agree ways of work and roles and responsibilities.
• Manage and maintain both on-shore and off-shore delivery teams to ensure alignment, co-ordination between teams and collaboration.
• Conduct performance reviews, hiring activities and performance improvement programs with support of HR and recruitment teams.
• Market your teams brand and highlight the value you are delivering.

Job Summary

Transunion Africa is looking for an experienced Release Train Engineer (RTE) who can bring dynamic and critical thinking to our agile delivery processes and partner with business and IT leadership to drive business value.

How You’ll Contribute

At the highest level, the following impact will be sought:

Strategic:

• Serve as the Release Train Engineer for the TU Africa (TUA) Agile Release Train (ART): facilitate planning and execution of the PI for the ART, as well as relentless improvement at the ART level
• Aligns and calibrates the organization’s technology deployment strategy with its business strategy. Incorporates, understands, and blends the functions of the division with the needs and requirements of the organization to effectively achieve goals and objectives.
• Improve existing capabilities by improving processes, tooling or investment in key assets to enable those capabilities to operate more efficiently.
• Knowledge of agile delivery and a vision of what efficient agile delivery looks like and what tools/processes need to be put in place in order to support that vision.
• Drive definition, documentation and implementation of a standard way of work, key agile processes, reporting and tool utilization across the ART
• Drive process improvements for the TUA ART on the Scaled Agile Framework to improve the flow. Optimize flow and establish KPI’s to appropriately measure flow.

People:

• Work with and build relationships with clients and business stakeholders including product owners, scrum masters, architects, technology leads, operations leads, InfoSec leads and infrastructure leads.
• Working closely with the Release Manager to build and maintain motivated and high performing agile delivery teams, agree backlog items and work prioritization.
• A customer centric focus – seeking to understand customer perception and experience of our products and services and how to improve this through consistent use of leading technologies, availability of appropriate information and appropriate internal prioritization and focus.
• Conduct performance reviews, hiring activities and performance improvement programs with support of HR and recruitment teams.
• Market your teams brand and highlight the value you are delivering.

Delivery:

• Empower and guide teams to consistently execute on assignments and meet deliverable timelines.
• Ensure predictable and consistent delivery by managing scope, timelines and tracking / mitigating delivery issues and risks as they arise.
• Provide technical understanding to support and guide teams in way of work and execution.
• Drive and own delivery of new products and feature enhancements in balance with operational concerns such as ticket resolutions, InfoSec remediations and technology upgrades.
• Drive special projects or key initiatives across multiple teams.
• Engage with international TransUnion stakeholders to understand global application strategy, operating models and strategic technology direction. Bring leading thinking and practices from the international TU teams to bear in the local landscape.
• Identify areas for continuous improvement and implement delivery processes to drive incremental improvements over time covering agile methodologies and DevOps capabilities and improve maturity.
• Direct activities, maintaining a balance of tactical and operational focus for critical technical business operations.
• Manage vendors, sub-contractors or other providers to ensure their objectives are clear and they are enabled to provide us with efficient delivery.
• Drive the delivery automation agenda and ensure that value is unlocked through automation.
• Acts as industry subject matter expert, keeps abreast of the external competitive environment, compare them to the division operations and assess against the underlying strategy.
• Experience with Lean Portfolio Management facilitation for program, portfolio, or executive-level
• Experience with Lean Portfolio reporting for executive level stakeholders
• Certification(s) in Agile methodologies (e.g., CSM, CSPO, CSP, PMI ACP, SA, SPC, RTE, SSM, SASM) preferred
• Strong understanding of and demonstrated experience in using Rally or a similar Enterprise Agile Tool

What You’ll Bring

• As a leader, you will support and coach the Agile Release Train (ART) for success which includes scheduling, coordinating and the management of releases across the enterprise for multiple applications across various domains.
• You will help design, plan and implement the tools and services to help product management and project teams manage and co-ordinate releases into production.
• Facilitate and maintain the ART backlog, prioritization and demand approval processes.
• Facilitate PI (Program Increment) planning readiness and PI planning events.
• Aggregate Team PI objectives into Program PI objectives and publish for visibility and transparency; work with the teams to track progress and mitigate risk.
• Assist with Program execution and feature completion tracking.
• Facilitate Scrum of Scrums and biweekly PI Performance Review sessions.
• Help manage Program risks, issues and dependencies.
• Help resolve and escalate Program impediments as needed.
• Ensure Program governance, cadence (calendars).
• Drive Program level process improvement via PI Inspect & Adapt.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science/Information Technology, or other related field
• Equivalent work experience of 5 to 10 years of information technology experience, with at least two years leadership experience in managing multiple, large, cross-functional teams or projects
• A minimum of 2 years of experience managing and facilitating program increment (PI) planning readiness, program increment (PI) planning events, program (PI) execution and program level improvements
• Scrum Master certification with 7+ years’ experience
• Experience applying Lean Thinking and Systems Thinking in large organizations
• Understand the general values and principles of Agile as outlined in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and be fully aligned to those values and principles
• Experience working in an Agile organization using Scrum, XP, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Managing scrum teams across domains, skills and geographies in a complex environment
• A strong delivery focus, coupled with the ability to manage and inspire people towards high performance
• Strong strategic orientation with the ability to set direction for multiple teams
• Strong experience managing the full SDLC
• Experience in working with DevOps and Agile methodologies

For positions based in South Africa, preference will be given to suitably qualified candidates from designated groups in line with the company's Employment Equity plan and targets.