JOB SUMMARY:The Senior Program/Project Manager - SAP S/4HANA Upgrade (North America) is responsible for leading the North American workstream of a global SAP ECC-to-SAP S/4HANA transformation, with a planned go-live in 2028.
While the overall program is led by the global IT organization, this role owns planning and execution for the North American region, including implementation activities, local add-ons and integrations, user acceptance testing (UAT), training programs, change management, communications, and stakeholder alignment across all North American businesses and functions.
The role is aimed at a highly experienced SAP program/project manager with a strong track record in large, complex, multi-year SAP implementations and upgrades, particularly SAP S/4HANA.
DUTIES/RESULTS:- Act as the primary North American program/project lead within the global SAP S/4HANA program governance structure.
- Develop and maintain the regional project plan (scope, timelines, milestones, dependencies, resources, budget) aligned with global standards and methodologies (e.g., SAP Activate / PMO framework).
- Ensure consistency with global design principles while representing North American regulatory, legal, tax, and business requirements.
- Coordinate with global IT, regional IT, business process owners, and external partners/consultants.
- Provide regular status reporting, risk/issue escalation, and decision-ready recommendations to regional leadership and the global program steering committee.
- Lead all North American implementation activities across requirements, solution design, build, testing, data migration, cutover planning, and post-go-live hypercare.
- Manage local add-on developments, interfaces, and integrations required to support regional business processes and legacy systems.
- Coordinate and oversee User Acceptance Testing (UAT) across all impacted business units, including test planning, test case definition, execution, defect management, and sign-off.
- Define target user groups and role-based training needs in collaboration with business process owners and functional leads.
- Oversee development of training content (classroom, virtual, e-learning, job aids) and ensure timely, high-quality training delivery to end users and key stakeholders.
- Serve as a visible change champion, ensuring consistent messaging and engagement from leadership across the region.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders across all North American business units, functions, and sites.
- Proactively identify, assess, and manage program and project risks, issues, and dependencies; drive mitigation and contingency plans and ensure clear ownership.
- Ensure adherence to global program standards, architecture principles, security and compliance requirements, and internal controls.
- Monitor quality of deliverables from all internal and external teams; ensure that testing and validation processes meet agreed criteria before moving to subsequent phases.
- Lead the regional hypercare phase after go-live, coordinating incident resolution, enhancement requests, and user support.
- Capture lessons learned and improvement opportunities from North America and feed them back into global continuous improvement initiatives.
- Support the transition from project mode to "business-as-usual" operations in collaboration with global IT, Shared Services, and business process owners.
SPECIFICATIONS:- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering, or related field (Master's degree preferred)
- 10-15+ years of overall IT project/program management experience, with a significant portion in ERP/SAP initiatives
- Minimum 3-5 full life-cycle SAP implementations, including at least one large SAP S/4HANA program or ECC-to-S/4HANA conversion in a global or multi-region context
- Proven experience managing large, cross-functional teams (IT, business, external partners) in a matrixed, international environment
- Demonstrated success leading complex change and user adoption (training programs, communication strategies, stakeholder engagement).
- Strong understanding of core SAP processes (e.g., Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, Record-to-Report, Manufacturing/Logistics) and how they are impacted by S/4HANA
- Professional certifications such as PMP, Prince2, or Scrum/Agile; SAP S/4HANA or SAP project management certifications are a plus.
Work Environment:Sugar Land Office
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