SAP Basis Technical Architect

Job Description

This is a Technical Architect position in HCI & SAP Professional Services, specialised in SAP Basis. The role designs SAP technical solutions for customers: in new bids, in assessments of existing landscapes, and in implementation, migration, upgrade and transformation projects.

Professional Services is the design authority of the HCI & SAP department. Every new opportunity passes through it, and it is the highest technical escalation level for the delivery teams. It has two tracks: Technical Architects, who own the technical design, and Solution Architects, who own the end-to-end solution, including its commercial and governance aspects.

This role belongs to the Technical Architecture track. On opportunities and projects where SAP Basis is the main scope, it also covers the Solution Architect activities.

Job Responsibilities

• Technical design: Own the SAP Basis technical design for customer engagements, from requirements to final design - landscape, sizing, high availability and disaster recovery, operating system and database, and hosting platform (on-premises, private or public cloud).
• Assessments and reviews: Assess existing SAP landscapes and run architecture reviews. Deliver clear findings, risks and recommendations.
• Projects: Define the technical approach for SAP implementation, migration, upgrade and S/4HANA conversion projects. Remain the design authority while the delivery teams execute.
• Presales: Analyse RFP and RFI requirements for SAP Basis scope. Design the solution, estimate the effort and write the technical sections of proposals and SOWs. Advise on commercial trade-offs.
• Transition: Contribute to the transition design when the department takes over a customer"s SAP environment.
• Customer engagement: Lead design workshops, explain proposed solutions to customer IT teams and leadership, and take part in bid defence sessions.
• Design validation: Validate designs with the SAP practice Tech Lead and with the Tech Leads of the other domains involved (compute, storage, network, cloud, database).
• Technical escalation: Support the delivery teams on complex SAP Basis problems that go beyond practice level.
• Working with Customers and Internal Teams:
  • Customers: Main technical counterpart on SAP Basis during bids, assessments and projects. Works with customer architects, SAP teams and IT leadership.
  • Solution Architects: Provides the SAP Basis design within the overall solution owned by the Solution Architect. Covers the Solution Architect activities directly where SAP Basis is the main scope.
  • SAP delivery team: Hands over the design to the SAP practice, which builds and operates the environment. Stays involved as design authority and escalation point.
  • Other practices: Works with the infrastructure, cloud, database, network and backup teams on the parts of the design they deliver.
  • Sales and bid teams: Supports opportunity qualification, proposal writing and customer presentations.

• Difference from an SAP Basis Operations Role: A SAP Basis operations role keeps systems running: monitoring, incidents, changes, patching and system copies. This role works before and above that level.
  • Output: Designs, assessments, effort estimates and proposal content - not tickets or system changes.
  • Scope: Several customers, opportunities and projects at the same time, not one landscape.
  • Decisions: Selects the technical approach and defends it with customers and internal teams.
  • Hands-on depth: Still required. Designs must be credible to the engineers who build them and to the customer"s own SAP experts. Hands-on work is occasional, mainly on complex escalations.

Job Requirements

Education

• Preferred: Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• Mandatory: Bachelor's degree in any field with equivalent professional experience relevant to the job.

Experience

• Minimum 8 years in SAP Basis, including at least 2 years in a senior technical lead or architecture role across several projects or customers.

Technical skills

• SAP platform: Strong knowledge of SAP NetWeaver (ABAP and Java stacks), SAP S/4HANA and SAP ECC 6.0.
• SAP HANA: Administration, sizing and architecture of SAP HANA, including high availability and disaster recovery options.
• Projects: Delivered SAP migration, upgrade or S/4HANA conversion projects, with hands-on use of SUM, SWPM and system copy procedures.
• Basis fundamentals: Transports (CTS+), kernel upgrades, system landscape design (DEV/QAS/PRD), authorisations and system monitoring with SAP Solution Manager.
• Infrastructure: Working knowledge of the layers below SAP - Linux and