Jenkins exposes the ability to use Jenkins Environment variables to pass parameters to a maven builds in the "goals and options" field of the jenkins job definition..

Specification of "-P ${myProfile}" in the "goals and options" field of a maven build will not cause the ${myProfile} slave variable to be substituted in the job invocation. Trace message says

"The requested profile "${myProfile}" could not be activated because it does not exist.

which of course is a true statement, becuase ${myProfile} "should" have been substituted for the valid ${myProfile} value specified on the slave the job was invoked on.

Not using a jenkins variable for the profile value does work (for example -P profileName) does activate the specified profile.