Senior Manager of SAP

Summit Utilities Inc • Fayetteville, AR

27d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager of SAP is responsible for the overall technical direction, stability, security, and evolution of the Summit’s SAP landscape. This position operates within a cloud‑based SAP S/4HANA environment on RISE and provides strategic oversight and day‑to‑day leadership for SAP Security, SAP Basis, Enterprise Architecture, and SAP development teams, including ABAP, Fiori, and SAP BTP.

This role serves as the primary technical authority for SAP architecture and platform decisions, ensuring the environment is secure, efficient, scalable, and aligned with business priorities and regulatory requirements typical of a natural gas utility. The Senior Manager partners closely with IT leadership, functional leaders, and external vendors to establish best practices for system architecture, development standards, performance optimization, and operational excellence, while also shaping the roadmap for future growth, innovation, and AI‑enabled capabilities.

This role is ideal for a leader who combines deep SAP technical expertise with strong people leadership and a forward‑looking mindset. A strong customer service-oriented philosophy is essential, and experience in the utilities sector is preferred.

Requirements

• Extensive experience in SAP technical roles, including SAP Basis, SAP Security, SAP architecture, and SAP custom development.
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing SAP development teams, including ABAP, Fiori/UI5, and SAP BTP developers.
• Strong experience with SAP S/4HANA, including development and extensibility concepts; experience with RISE or cloud‑based environments strongly preferred.
• Deep understanding of SAP development best practices, clean‑core principles, and performance optimization.
• Experience governing custom development in a regulated or audit‑driven environment.
• Proven ability to align architecture, development, and operations teams around common technical standards and goals.
• Experience collaborating with system integrators and managed service providers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required.
• Service focused and can make quick, concise decisions.
• Friendly and effective communication skills are a must.
• Influencer resulting in a trusted advisor relationship between IT and business partners.
• Strong interpersonal and consultative skills with the ability to manage others.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment, managing multiple initiatives and priorities.
• Not afraid to fail but always with a plan to remediate and improve.
• Attention to detail, especially with contracts, vendor management, and price negotiation.
• Capable of developing short and long-term plans for areas of responsibility and owns both successes and failures with humility and integrity.
• Experience in supporting and executing large-scale greenfield/brownfield SAP migrations.

Nice To Haves

• SAP development, architecture, or cloud certifications are a plus but not required.
• Track record of moving on-premises technology stacks to the cloud a plus.
• Experience in the utilities sector (gas, electric, water, renewables) is preferred.
• Advanced degree or equivalent experience preferred.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership, coaching, and performance management for SAP Security, SAP Basis, Enterprise Architecture, and SAP development teams, including ABAP, Fiori/UI5, and SAP BTP developers.
• Support professional development through mentoring, skills advancement, and career pathing aligned with evolving SAP technologies.
• Promote a collaborative culture between architecture, development, security, and operations teams to ensure cohesive solution delivery.
• Own and evolve the SAP technical architecture strategy for the S/4HANA on RISE environment, including core ERP, extensions, integrations, and development platforms.
• Define and enforce architectural standards and design principles for custom development across ABAP, Fiori, and SAP BTP.
• Balance innovation and extensibility with long‑term maintainability, performance, and regulatory compliance.
• Provide strategic direction and oversight for SAP custom development across ABAP, Fiori/UI5, and SAP Business Technology Platform.
• Ensure development practices follow secure coding standards, performance best practices, and SAP‑recommended extensibility models.
• Guide decisions on side‑by‑side extensions, clean‑core principles, and appropriate use of SAP BTP services.
• Establish governance for code quality, transport management, deployment processes, and lifecycle management.
• Oversee SAP Basis operations, including environment management, transports, upgrades, patching, monitoring, and system refreshes.
• Ensure system availability, performance stability, and disaster recovery readiness across all SAP environments.
• Drive proactive performance optimization and capacity planning efforts in coordination with development and functional teams.
• Define and track operational metrics to assess system health and platform effectiveness.
• Oversee SAP security architecture, role design, access governance, and segregation‑of‑duties controls across both standard and custom solutions.
• Ensure security considerations are embedded in development and architectural decisions.
• Partner with cybersecurity, audit, and compliance teams to support reviews, remediation, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Guide enterprise architecture practices related to SAP and its integration with non‑SAP platforms and cloud services.
• Ensure integrations, APIs, and extensions developed on BTP or other platforms align with enterprise architecture principles.
• Contribute to IT roadmaps, ensuring SAP development and platform investments align with business strategy.
• Act as the senior technical point of contact for SAP, RISE providers, system integrators, and development partners.
• Provide technical oversight of vendor‑delivered developments and ensure adherence to architectural and coding standards.
• Communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to IT and business leadership.
• Lead evaluation and adoption of new SAP capabilities, including SAP BTP services, automation, analytics, and AI‑enabled solutions.
• Define architectural guardrails for introducing AI and advanced capabilities within custom SAP solutions.
• Monitor SAP roadmap and industry trends to guide long‑term platform and development strategy.

Benefits

• Summit offers competitive pay and medical/dental/vision and other benefits that provide flexibility, choice and support to our employees when they need it most. We understand that home and family are essential pieces of your life, and our benefits are designed to support you both at work and at home.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees