Role Overview

Cloud ERP Release Lead Owns enterprise release governance and application environment coordination for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and connected ERP applications. Establish predictable release trains, configuration synchronization, regression readiness, environment/instance strategy, rebaselining and merge coordination for dependent workstreams, operational change controls, and adoption of SAP cloud releases without assuming infrastructure responsibilities retained by SaaS providers.

Key Responsibilities

·   Own the integrated ERP release calendar across SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and connected enterprise applications.

·   Define release governance, entry/exit criteria, cutover controls, deployment approvals, rollback/contingency planning, and hypercare expectations.

·   Coordinate SAP Public Cloud release and upgrade impact assessment, including feature review, regression scope, post-upgrade testing, and business readiness.

·   Own application environment strategy across development/configuration, test, quality, and production-aligned landscapes, including purpose, refresh/rebaseline principles, access, and scheduling.

·   Coordinate configuration synchronization and deployment sequencing across the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 3-system landscape where applicable.

·   Manage rebaselining and environment merge plans for parallel workstreams, ensuring changes are reconciled, tested, traceable, and promoted through approved paths.

·   Maintain release dependency maps spanning configuration, extensions, integrations, data, security roles, workflows, and connected SaaS products.

·   Chair release readiness reviews and drive closure of unresolved defects, testing gaps, data dependencies, and operational readiness actions.

·   Coordinate release packaging and deployment activities with functional, technical, integration, data, security, and vendor teams.

·   Own production change windows, freeze periods, emergency-change governance, and post-deployment verification.

·   Establish release metrics, defect leakage reporting, deployment success measures, and continuous improvement actions.

·   Maintain authoritative release plans, environment calendars, configuration baselines, change records, and deployment evidence.

·   Partner with QA to define regression strategy, automated-test coverage, upgrade-test execution, and risk-based test scope.

·   Coordinate business communications for planned releases, outages/limitations, validation needs, and post-release status.

·   Manage operational handoff from project delivery into steady-state support and ensure support teams receive runbooks and known-error information.

·   Escalate provider/SAP release risks, environment constraints, or cross-team conflicts with clear business impact and decision options.

SAP / Product-Specific Responsibilities

·   SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition release lifecycle, feature adoption, testing, upgrade-test capabilities, and 3-system landscape configuration synchronization.

·   SAP Central Business Configuration and supported configuration deployment processes where applicable.

·   SAP Cloud ALM or enterprise ALM tooling for release, test, defect, and change traceability where deployed.

·   Connected SaaS release coordination for SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, SAP BTP/Integration Suite, Deltek Replicon, and other integrated applications.

·   Environment rebaseline/merge coordination applies to customer-managed configuration, code, integration artifacts, test data/plans, and parallel delivery baselines—not SAP-operated SaaS infrastructure.

Operational Responsibilities

·   Operate a repeatable release train with clear release cutoffs, readiness gates, production validation, and hypercare.

·   Maintain an environment calendar that prevents collision among testing, data loads, configuration deployments, and integration changes.

·   Drive emergency change discipline and root-cause review for failed deployments.

·   Continuously improve release predictability, automation, documentation, and regression coverage.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

ERP product owners, functional leads, SAP technical/BTP teams, Integration, Data Migration, Security/IAM, QA/Test, PMO, Operations/Service Management, business process owners, SAP support, and SI/vendor teams.

Required Qualifications

·   Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Information Systems, Engineering, Computer Science, or related discipline.

·   8+ years in enterprise application release, environment, change, or operations management; 3+ years in S/4HANA-era programs preferred.

·   Experience coordinating cloud/SaaS releases and complex integrated ERP landscapes.

·   Strong knowledge of change control, regression testing, cutover, incident/problem management, and production governance.

·   Demonstrated ability to coordinate multiple delivery teams without conflating release governance with functional configuration ownership.

Required Technical / Functional Skills

·   SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition release/upgrade and landscape concepts.

·   3-system landscape configuration synchronization and SAP Central Business Configuration concepts.

·   Release planning, environment calendars, rebaselining/merge governance, cutover, rollback, hypercare, and emergency change.

·   Test management, regression strategy, defect management, and operational readiness.

·   ITIL-aligned change/release/service management and ALM tooling.

Preferred Qualifications

·   Experience with SAP Cloud ALM, ServiceNow, Azure DevOps/Jira, or comparable enterprise release tooling.

·   Experience coordinating SAP Ariba, Fieldglass, BTP/Integration Suite, and non-SAP SaaS releases alongside S/4.

·   ITIL 4 Foundation and/or current SAP learning credentials related to SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementation, operations, or SAP Cloud ALM.
Thanks,
Rohit Chauhan