JD Sports Fashion
QA Environments Practice Lead
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QA Environments Practice Lead
Job Title: QA Environments CoE – Practice Lead
About JD Group
Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with over 60,000 colleagues and 3,400 stores across 30+ markets worldwide. JD Sports Fashion Plc, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and a FTSE100 company since 2019, continues to grow in the UK and internationally.
We aim to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. As part of this success, we seek Mission-Driven Champions committed to operational excellence, innovation, and a people-led, customer-focused culture.
Role Overview
The QA Environments CoE – Practice Lead manages the coordination, governance, and operational excellence of non-production test environments across our technology landscape. This pivotal role ensures environments are stable, secure, consistent, and aligned to production, enabling seamless delivery across programmes, projects, and product teams.
Successfully navigating Agile delivery models, this hybrid role blends hands-on environment management with planning, scheduling, and continuous improvement. You will collaborate closely with QA, Engineering, Product, and Service teams to guarantee environments are fit-for-purpose, optimised, and reliable for testing and releases.
This is a non-people-management role focused on technical coordination, quality advocacy, and environment excellence within the QA CoE.
Key Responsibilities
Environment Leadership & Delivery
- Lead Test Environment activities across programmes and projects, ensuring consistent provision and availability.
- Define, maintain, and govern Environment Schedules and Plans, providing accurate estimation, progress tracking, and status reporting.
- Act as the primary coordination point for environment-related activities.
- Deliver clear communication and reporting on environment availability, risks, and status.
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Environment Planning & Coordination
- Define, maintain, and govern environment schedules, plans, and roadmaps.
- Coordinate environment usage across concurrent programmes and product teams, managing conflicts, dependencies, and prioritisation of demand.
- Align environment provisioning with project timelines and product backlogs.
Environment Management & Operations
- Oversee day-to-day management of non-production environments.
- Coordinate environment provisioning, configuration, and deployment.
- Ensure environments remain representative of production in terms of configuration and data.
- Manage data refreshes, deployments, maintenance, and system updates.
- Track and manage environment defects, risks, and issues through resolution.
Governance, Compliance & Standards
- Ensure adherence to Change, Release, and Configuration Management policies.
- Maintain control of environment baselines (software, data, infrastructure).
- Ensure environments comply with security, audit, and regulatory standards.
- Keep updated documentation of environment configurations, processes, and procedures.
Stakeholder Collaboration
- Work closely with QA, Engineering, Product, and Project Teams.
- Supporting delivery teams by removing environment-related blockers.
Continuous Improvement & Strategy Execution
- Contribute to the QA Environments strategy within the CoE.
- Identify and implement improvements to processes, tooling, and automation.
- Promote adoption of modern practices (CI/CD, DevOps, cloud-based environments).
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Skills & Experience
Core Experience
- Proven experience in QA, Test Environment Management, or related delivery roles.
- Experience working across complex technology programmes and Agile environments.
- Hands-on experience with non-production environments and test support activities.
Technical & Domain Expertise
- Expertise in test environment concepts and lifecycle.
- Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS).
- Experience with environment provisioning, deployments, and data management.
- Broad IT knowledge spanning infrastructure, applications, and integrations.
Behavioural Attributes
- Strong planning, prioritisation, and organisational skills.
- Ability to handle multiple competing priorities in fast-paced environments.
- Clear and effective communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Proactive and self-driven, with a delivery-focused mindset.
- Strong collaborator with the ability to influence without direct authority.
Summary
This role sits at the heart of the QA CoE, ensuring environments are reliable, governed, and optimised for high-quality software delivery. It is a hands-on, coordination-focused position ideal for an experienced practitioner who can bridge QA, engineering, and operations, driving continuous improvement without direct people management responsibility.
Benefits
JD Sports empowers colleagues to thrive. In return for your commitment, we offer:
- Staff discount on JD Group products and other brands within the organisation.
- Personal development opportunities to learn, grow, and progress at work.
Thank you for your time—we look forward to supporting you in this mission-critical role.
#JD
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