Cutover & Release Lead

One on-site contract seat in Dubai with our external partner: a large retail group headquartered in Dubai with a workforce of more than 16,000 people. You will own the plan that takes each release live: cutover planning, rehearsals, the command centre on the night, and the hypercare that follows.ABOUT THE CLIENTOur partner is one of the largest luxury and premium retail groups in the Middle East. Headquartered in Dubai, it employs more than 16,000 people across the region and runs several hundred stores, dozens of e-commerce sites and apps, and a portfolio of over 300 international brands. It is part-way through a multi-year technology transformation: a new SAP core across finance, people and logistics, and the omnichannel retail estate around it, delivered in back-to-back releases by country and by scope together with a global system integrator. It is one of the larger programmes of its kind in the region. We share the client's name with shortlisted candidates.ABOUT THE ROLEDreamcast Interactive is a Dubai-headquartered studio building AI systems, web and mobile products, immersive AR/VR and full-cycle games for clients across the US, UK and GCC. We are placing a Cutover & Release Lead with the client above on a 12-month full-time contract (with possibility for extension), engaged through Dreamcast and working on-site in the client's programme team in Dubai. This is client work, not an internal role.You will own cutover, release and hypercare for the non-SAP estate: point of sale, order management, warehouse management, digital commerce, customer platforms and the infrastructure underneath them. You work day to day with the programme manager, the testing lead, the project managers and domain leads, and the integrator and vendor teams. Releases run back to back, so you will be preparing the next one while hypercare on the last is still running, and several releases will sit at different stages at once.WHAT YOU WILL OWN- One integrated cutover plan across every workstream, at task level: each task owned, timed and sequenced, with a critical path you can defend- Entry criteria, go/no-go criteria and the gates between them, agreed with business and delivery stakeholders well before the window- Dress rehearsals: designing them, running them, capturing what broke, and driving the plan to a properly rehearsed, executable state- Rollback and contingency plans for every release, written before the window rather than during it- The command centre through each cutover: shift plans, progress tracking, communications and escalation- Go/no-go checkpoints: you chair them and you produce the decision pack behind them- The integrator and third-party vendors, coordinated through execution to the plan- The hypercare model, agreed and staffed before go-live: who is on and when, how issues are triaged, what each severity means and how fast it is answered- Hypercare itself: triage, resolution tracking and daily reporting into programme governance, with the incident and change tooling configured to support it- The handover to business-as-usual against agreed exit criteria, with a transition that actually completes- The release pipeline: the release calendar, dependencies between releases, freeze periods, and a capacity view per release for the portfolio directorWHAT YOU BRING- 10+ years in IT delivery, including at least 5 years leading cutover and release on large, multi-system programmes- Two or more enterprise go-lives where the cutover was yours end to end: plan, rehearsals and the command centre- Hands-on retail or consumer technology experience: point of sale, order management, warehouse management, e-commerce or customer platforms- You have defined hypercare, run it, and moved an estate into a permanent support organisation- Delivery alongside a global system integrator, holding partner teams to the dates they committed to- Task-level planning discipline that holds up under time pressure- Command centre experience, including windows that run overnight and over weekends- Calm and decisive when the clock is running, with sound judgement about what to escalate, to whom, and when- Clear, structured written and spoken English with senior stakeholdersNICE TO HAVE- Programmes where SAP ran alongside a non-SAP omnichannel estate- Multi-country rollouts, or a second-country release after a first- Retail peak-trading periods and the freeze calendars around them- Previous work in the Middle East; Arabic or FrenchCONTRACT- 12-month full-time contract through Dreamcast Interactive, starting as soon as possible, with extension based on performance- On-site in Dubai full-time, with availability for cutover windows that fall outside normal hours or over weekends- Competitive monthly rate, benchmarked to the profilePrefer email? hello@dreamcastinteractive.com with the subject "Cutover Lead – Your Name".