GENERAL SUMMARY: The Manager - IT Testing, Change, and Environment/Release is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, coordination, and operational execution across Epic testing, Epic-aligned change management, environment allocation, and release management. This role ensures safe, predictable, and high-quality delivery of Epic functionality while protecting system integrity, clinical operations, and organizational readiness.
The Manager leads a combined team supporting testing (integrated and supporting other test types), Epic change coordination, and environment/release operations, and serves as a key operational partner to application teams, infrastructure, PMO, and enterprise IT governance groups. The role operates within established enterprise change and governance frameworks while providing Epic-specific expertise, coordination, and execution. The Manager serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point and drives continuous improvement through process discipline, metrics, and effective use of tooling.
PRINCIPLE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: - Testing Leadership and Oversight
- Oversees integrated Epic testing and ensures the team supports other testing types (application, unit, MRT, regression, etc.) as able.
- Organizes, directs, and manages testing activities for Epic upgrades, Service Updates (SUs), enhancements, fixes, and major initiatives.
- Coordinates testing activities across iterative releases, balancing test milestones with environment availability and release schedules.
- Ensures testing deliverables, milestones, risks, and outcomes are clearly documented and communicated to stakeholders.
- Assists with testing strategy across decentralized application teams, providing guidance, standards, and risk awareness.
- Change Management (Epic-Aligned)
- Oversees Epic-specific change coordination while aligning to enterprise IT change management and ITSM frameworks.
- Serves as an active member of the Change Advisory Board (CAB), providing operational insight and advocating for Epic system integrity and readiness.
- Partners with the central IT Change team to ensure changes are properly vetted, packaged, scheduled, and communicated.
- Enforces appropriate change controls across production and non-production environments to protect test validity and operational stability.
- Environment Management •
- Plans, schedules, and controls deployment and utilization of all non-production Epic environments.
- Balances project, enhancement, testing, and operational needs across shared environments while mitigating conflicts and risks.
- Establishes and maintains clear purpose definitions for each environment in partnership with infrastructure and application teams.
- Coordinates with infrastructure, access administration, and other IT partners to ensure environment readiness, availability, and appropriate access controls.
- Maintains environment calendars, utilization views, and forward-looking capacity plans.
- Release Management
- Oversees Epic release management activities, including upgrades, enhancements, Special Updates, and fixes.
- Maintains release integrity across non-production and production environments.
- Identifies and communicates interdependencies, risks, and readiness concerns associated with releases.
- Participates in operational readiness reviews and go/no-go discussions for Epic releases and major events.
- Process Ownership, Governance, and Continuous Improvement
- Serves as the process owner for Epic environment and release management tooling, calendars, and supporting workflows.
- Develops, maintains, and enforces standard operating procedures, documentation, and audit trails across testing, change, environment, and release activities.
- Chairs or facilitates governance forums such as the Environment Council to drive alignment, transparency, and decision-making.
- Maintains compliance with SOC, CAB, ITIL/ITSM, regulatory, and Epic standards.
- Captures operational signals, lessons learned, and metrics to drive continuous improvement and risk reduction.
- Performs continual review of emerging AI, automation, and AIOps capabilities applicable to testing, change, environment, and release management; evaluates tools for risk reduction, efficiency, and scalability; and partners with enterprise teams to pilot or adopt appropriate solutions where value is demonstrated.
- Operational Readiness and Escalation
- Serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point for testing, change, environment, and release-related issues.
- Manages escalation paths and coordination across application, infrastructure, vendor, and operational teams.
- Supports readiness for Epic upgrades, go-lives, environment freezes, DR cutover/cutback events, and critical fix installs.
- Financial and People Leadership
- Supports budget planning and maintenance activities by providing operational inputs, utilization data, and forecasting insights (budget ownership retained at the Director level).
- Provides direct leadership and coaching to a team of approximately five direct reports, including testing leads/analysts and change management resources.
- Supports matrixed resources and prepares for future growth as scope expands.
- Fosters a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare Informatics, or a related field.
- Minimum of five (5) years of experience in Epic or EMR testing, environment management, release management, and/or change coordination.
- Minimum of two (2) years of prior management or supervisory experience.
- Demonstrated experience operating within enterprise change management and ITSM frameworks.
- Demonstrated experience partnering with operational support teams to review post go-live defects and incidents, analyze trends arising from incident tickets, and feed those learnings back into testing strategy, scope, and process improvement activities.
- Practical working knowledge of automation, AI-assisted tooling, or productivity platforms used to scale testing, change, environment, or release activities without proportional increases in staffing (e.g., test automation, workflow automation, analytics, or AI-assisted planning and analysis).
- Strong analytical, written, and verbal communication skills.
- Proven ability to coordinate across technical, clinical, and operational stakeholders.
CERTIFICATIONS/LICENSURES REQUIRED: - Epic certifications preferred, including Data Courier, HODs, or other environment related certifications/badges.
- Certification or experience in SDLC, Release Management, Project Management, or ITIL preferred.
