Location / Remote: Remote within the continental United States
Travel: Up to approximately 25%
Employment Type: Permanent / Direct Hire
Compensation: up to $150,000 annually + 12.5% annual bonus opportunity.
Benefits:
- Comprehensive medical and prescription drug coverage, with multiple plan options
- Dental and vision insurance
- 401(k) retirement plan with company matching contributions
- Life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage
- Paid time off, company holidays, and paid parental leave
- Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options, subject to eligibility
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Education and tuition reimbursement opportunities
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and access to telehealth services
- Additional voluntary benefits, including legal insurance, critical illness and accident coverage, and employee discounts
A large, nationwide organization is undertaking a major enterprise technology transformation through the implementation of SAP S/4HANA and the development of an internal SAP Center of Excellence (CoE). The Manager, Incident & Problem Management will play a critical leadership role in establishing reliable incident and problem management practices, maintaining operational stability, and strengthening the organization's ability to respond to and prevent significant production issues.
This is primarily a hands-on process leadership and service delivery management role rather than a traditional people-management position. The ideal candidate brings substantial experience managing major incidents within SAP environments, strong SAP S/4HANA technical understanding, and demonstrated success leading root-cause investigations, implementing permanent corrective actions, and holding external application support vendors accountable.
The position offers an opportunity to help build and mature incident and problem management processes within a growing SAP Center of Excellence, working closely with internal technology teams, business leadership, and external service providers.
Responsibilities:
- Lead Major Incident Management activities for Priority 1 (Critical) and Priority 2 (High) SAP production incidents, coordinating rapid service restoration and minimizing business disruption.
- Direct emergency technical bridges and incident response efforts involving SAP Basis, IT infrastructure, networking, application development, external vendors, and business stakeholders.
- Establish and continuously improve incident intake, triage, severity classification, escalation, ownership, and resolution processes within the SAP Center of Excellence.
- Lead post-incident reviews and root-cause analysis to identify systemic problems, recurring incidents, and opportunities for permanent corrective action.
- Partner with SAP development, quality assurance, infrastructure, and application support teams to implement durable technical and process improvements that prevent recurring service disruptions.
- Maintain and improve the Known Error Database (KEDB), incident documentation, problem records, and operational knowledge-sharing practices.
- Oversee external Application Management Services (AMS) partners responsible for Tier 1 and Tier 2 SAP application support, including service quality, incident resolution, escalation, and adherence to service-level agreements.
- Coordinate effective ticket ownership, technical escalation, and handoffs between external service providers and internal Tier 3 support teams.
- Develop clear, timely executive communications explaining significant incidents, business impact, recovery progress, estimated restoration times, and corrective actions.
- Monitor incident volumes, response and resolution times, recurring problems, service-level performance, and operational trends to identify improvement opportunities.
- Identify issues caused by application defects, process weaknesses, or end-user training gaps and coordinate appropriate corrective action.
- Support SAP implementations, production cutovers, stabilization periods, major releases, and critical service events as operational needs require.
- Collaborate across internal IT, business operations, SAP partners, and operating locations to strengthen service reliability, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Required Skills:
- Minimum 5+ years of experience in Major Incident Management, Problem Management, or IT Service Management within an SAP environment.
- Demonstrated expertise in SAP S/4HANA systems and architecture, including the technical dependencies involved in enterprise SAP production operations.
- Proven experience leading Priority 1 and Priority 2 major incident response activities, including technical bridge coordination, escalation management, service restoration, and incident closure.
- Advanced root-cause analysis and problem management experience, including post-incident reviews, recurring incident investigation, permanent corrective actions, and Known Error Database management.
- Experience establishing, implementing, or improving incident management and problem management processes within an enterprise technology environment.
- Proven experience overseeing external Application Management Services (AMS) providers, including vendor performance, SLA enforcement, support escalations, and cross-team coordination.
- Strong understanding of enterprise IT service management principles, incident severity classification, service ownership, operational governance, and continuous service improvement.
- Demonstrated ability to coordinate cross-functional technical teams and lead critical incident response efforts under pressure.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including experience preparing executive-level incident communications and reporting business impacts to organizational leadership.
- Strong analytical skills, including the ability to evaluate incident trends, recurring failures, service performance, and operational improvement opportunities.
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
Preferred Skills:
- Experience supporting SAP S/4HANA implementation, production stabilization, hypercare, or enterprise transformation initiatives.
- Experience helping establish or mature an SAP Center of Excellence or enterprise service delivery organization.
- Experience developing new incident and problem management processes within complex, multi-entity organizations.
- Familiarity with ITIL practices and established IT service management frameworks.
- Experience with ServiceNow or comparable enterprise ITSM platforms.
- Experience supporting geographically distributed business operations and coordinating incident response across multiple technical teams, vendors, and time zones.
- Demonstrated success improving operational reliability, reducing recurring incidents, or strengthening vendor service performance through measurable process improvements.
