Head of Applications

Albemarle•Houston, TX

10d•Onsite

About The Position

Ketjen Corporation, a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries, is hiring a Head of Applications. This role will lead the ERP and broader application landscape that runs the business, overseeing a portfolio of almost 200 applications across various functions including finance, supply chain, manufacturing, commercial, quality, EHS, research, legal, and HR. SAP is the core ERP, supported by master data governance, cloud services, and specialized systems. Experience in manufacturing, particularly within chemical process industries, plant operations, product quality, and regulatory requirements, is highly valued. A significant aspect of this role involves establishing a business relationship manager (BRM) model from scratch, connecting business functions to the applications team and shaping the BRM team through internal talent and new hires.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, business, or a related field.
At least 10 years in enterprise applications leadership, including direct experience with SAP or a comparable ERP.
Experience building or running a business relationship manager or IT business partner model.
A track record of managing a large application portfolio.
Strong stakeholder management skills across finance, supply chain, commercial, and other functional leaders.
Experience managing software vendors, contracts, and implementation partners.
Experience supporting applications in a manufacturing environment, including working with plant, operations, quality, EHS, maintenance, and supply chain stakeholders.
Comfort building a function and team from a limited starting point, with a willingness to stay hands-on when needed.
A business-facing technology leader who builds trust quickly, listens carefully, and can translate between executive priorities, functional needs, and technical delivery.
Someone who can bring order, accountability, and clear decision-making to an application landscape that has grown without a single owner.
A pragmatic leader who can set priorities, make trade-offs, and say no to good ideas that do not pay for themselves or fit the roadmap.
A hands-on leader who can operate effectively in a small team, balancing strategic direction with practical execution when needed.
A team builder who can identify strong internal talent, supplement with the right external hires, and create a culture of ownership, service, and business partnership.
Someone comfortable leading through a mixed model of internal employees, managed services partners, software vendors, and implementation teams, with a clear view of what stays in-house and what partners should handle.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with SAP S/4HANA is essential; experience with SAP RISE is strongly preferred.
Experience transitioning application support to a managed services partner, ideally following a carve-out, divestiture, or merger.
Background in manufacturing, with strong preference for chemicals, specialty materials, refining, or another process industry where SAP and related applications support plant operations, quality, EHS, maintenance, and supply chain execution.
Additional valued experience with SAP IBP, SAP Concur, SAP Master Data Governance, SAP Business Technology Platform, and Salesforce.
Experience in a private equity-owned or sponsor-backed company.

Responsibilities

Identify, select, recruit, and lead business relationship managers, drawing from internal talent and adding new hires where needed.
Set the operating model for how business relationship managers gather requirements, manage demand, and prioritize competing requests across various functions.
Ensure every major business function has a clear channel into IT and understands system ownership.
Own the SAP roadmap end to end, including core ERP modules, master data governance, cloud platform, and planning services.
Prioritize enhancement requests, upgrades, and new capabilities against business value and team capacity.
Partner with finance, supply chain, and manufacturing leaders to ensure the ERP evolves with the business needs, including plant operations, production planning, quality, EHS, and process manufacturing workflows.
Evaluate the current application landscape, build a full inventory of existing applications, their owners, and costs.
Rationalize the portfolio by identifying redundant tools, systems that no longer fit, and gaps.
Own the integration layer connecting systems to each other and to the core ERP.
Maintain master data standards and ownership across functions.
Finish remaining application contract and licensing items tied to the Albemarle separation.
Confirm data ownership and access are fully settled for applications moved off shared infrastructure.
Manage relationships with SAP, implementation partners, and other software vendors.
Lead application strategy and vendor direction for key application contracts, working with Procurement to negotiate terms.
Evaluate and transition day-to-day application support, especially tier 2 and tier 3 SAP support, to an application managed services partner.
Define the application managed services partner landscape with the CIO, including services and integration into the IT operating model.
Partner with the IT governance lead to define processes for managing partner relationships, service performance, issue escalation, and SLA reporting.
Build a disciplined intake and approval process for new application requests.
Build the applications team structure, including business relationship managers, functional analysts, and any necessary developers or configuration specialists.
Set delivery standards for testing, change management, and user adoption.
Own the applications budget and report on cost, delivery, and adoption in business-understandable terms.