Corporate Functions - SAP Technical Lead at Astron Energy (Pty) Ltd.

The SAP Technical Lead is responsible for the SAP technology strategy and planning, including all work related to SAP Basis and technical architecture. Responsible for the SAP landscape, maintenance and support. Plan and manage the maintenance schedule, DR tests, SAP change request management via a SAP CAB. Fulfils a critical role of gatekeeper to ensure that only thoroughly tested, approved changes are moved to the production environment. Works with support vendors to keep the environment safe, reliable and compliant and escalates issues or concerns in a timely fashion to the Applications Manager.

Key Responsibilities but not limited to:

•  SAP technical strategy and planning
• Influence and plan the maintenance of technical application support and updates
• Manage and understand the technical impacts and changes required by projects
• Manage the relationship between the company and application support partners providing technical support to the environment.
• Estimate and plan all work effort relating to SAP Basis activities and Technical architecture components
• Manage technical architecture analysis, design, build, test and deploy for: Development architecture; Execution architecture - technical strategy for printing, faxing, Batch scheduling etc.; Infrastructure architecture – Sizing, virtualization, desktops, networks etc.
• Advise on technical approach for all systems integrating to SAP, as well as manage 3rd party dependencies in the environment
• Plan and manage SAP systems implementation and maintenance schedules on S4/HANA, Commerce Cloud, Ariba, PI/PO, BW, GRC and Solution Manager, and any other SAP products that are implemented.
• Plan, manage and test DR
• Troubleshooting and root cause analysis
• Responsible for the SAP change request & technical release management processes.
• Determine and communicate the content of each release and manage the technical release process
• Act as gate keeper for release to production by ensuring all required documentation and approvals are received before permitting the technical move to production; escalate and drive resolution of issues related to scheduling conflicts
• Identify dependencies and pre-requisites of projects (Technical & Functional)
• Troubleshoot technical and integration issue experienced within the SAP environment.
• Manage the communication and resolution of technical and integration related issues across multiple internal and third party service providers.
• Govern the technical and integration issue resolution process.

Professional Qualification and Certifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or other related field, or equivalent work experience.

Work Experience: 

• Deep understanding of system application and specifically SAP and associated systems.
• 7+ years of SAP Basis experience
• 3+ years SAP S4/HANA experience, including at least a full cycle of SAP implementation preferred.

Knowledge and skills:

• Proven experience in implementing/upgrading SAP systems. Expertise in SAP landscape optimization, tuning and sizing.
• SAP HANA, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Ariba, SAP Business Objects, SAP Data Services, SAP Business Warehouse (BW), Process Orchestration (PO) and SAP Solution Manager.
• Change & release management knowledge
• Practical understanding of SAP's Transport process and correction system knowledge as well as BASIS functions.
• Experience with vendor management, hosting services providers and AO (application outsourcing) support.
• Prior experience working with outsourced provider for Level 1, 2 and 3 support, preferred.
• Understanding of Change management tools
• SAP Solution manager knowledge
• Project Management experience

Key Processes Supported:

This role supports to following critical Office processes:

• Any business process that utilises an SAP Application (SAP S4, Ariba, Concur, AE Connect, etc). Processes include Order to cash, Procure to pay.