Senior Manager — SAP Basis and Cloud Leader

Overview

Lead the availability, performance, security and technical operations of Xylem's global SAP platform landscape, including S/4HANA, RISE with SAP, cloud infrastructure, backup and disaster recovery, and a global Basis team.

What you'll do

• Own end-to-end technical operations for the global S/4HANA landscape and connected SAP systems, including availability, stability, and service levels against business-agreed commitments.
• Manage the RISE with SAP relationship operationally, including service level accountability, escalation, change coordination, maintenance windows, and the shared responsibility model.
• Own the RACI boundary between Xylem, SAP, the hyperscaler, and the AMS partner, and keep it explicit.
• Lead major incident management for technical outages, including bridge command, communication to business leadership, and formal RCCA through to closed corrective actions.
• Own the technical calendar for release cycles, SAP upgrades and support packs, kernel and database patching, and maintenance planning that respects business-critical periods such as period-end and peak shipping.
• Own system-level performance, including work process configuration, memory and buffer parameters, dialog and background workload balancing, RFC and gateway tuning, and system parameter optimization.
• Manage HANA database operations and optimization, including memory management, delta merge behavior, table partitioning and distribution, savepoint and log management, and workload class configuration.
• Own capacity management and sizing forecasts with SAP and the hyperscaler, based on real transaction volumetrics from deployment waves.
• Lead data volume management, archiving, and data aging strategy to keep the landscape performant as scope and history grow.
• Own the backup and recovery strategy end to end, including backup design and scheduling, retention policy, log backup management, and validated restore capability across all environments.
• Define and prove RPO and RTO commitments per system with the business, including restore testing on a published cadence.
• Own high availability and disaster recovery architecture, including HA design review, DR runbooks, failover procedures, and regular DR exercises with documented results.
• Ensure business continuity plans are current, tested, and understood by the people who would execute them.
• Maintain audit-ready evidence of backup integrity, restore validation, and DR test outcomes.
• Own system landscape architecture, client strategy, system refresh and copy processes, and environment provisioning for build, test, training, and deployment waves.
• Own transport landscape administration and change control in partnership with the ABAP and BTP team.
• Manage technical security operations, including system hardening, patching cadence, certificate and encryption management, secure integration configuration, and audit and compliance evidence.
• Partner with security and GRC on privileged access controls, including firefighter administration, emergency access, and log review discipline.
• Own monitoring and observability across the landscape using Focused Run, Cloud ALM, EarlyWatch, and integration with enterprise monitoring.
• Provide Basis readiness for every deployment wave, including environment strategy, cutover technical planning, downtime minimization, mock cutover support, and hypercare coverage.
• Lead a global Basis team across onshore and offshore with follow-the-sun coverage for production support.
• Manage AMS partner Basis delivery quality, staffing continuity, and adherence to Xylem operational standards.
• Partner with the Business Performance Management Leader on platform performance issues.

What you'll need

• 15+ years in SAP Basis and technical operations, with at least 5 years leading global teams.
• Deep hands-on S/4HANA Basis expertise, including installation, migration, upgrade, and operations at global scale.
• Expert-level HANA database administration, including memory and persistence management, performance monitoring, partitioning, system replication, and troubleshooting.
• Proven ownership of backup, recovery, HA, and DR for business-critical SAP systems, including demonstrated restore and failover testing rather than documented intent.
• Demonstrated production ownership through S/4HANA go-lives and hypercare in a multi-wave global program.
• Strong command of system performance tuning, capacity planning, and workload management.
• Experience with SAP Solution Manager, Focused Run, and Cloud ALM for monitoring and technical operations.
• Landscape and transport management, system copy and refresh, and environment strategy at scale.
• Composure and command presence in a production outage, with the ability to communicate technical status to business leadership without minimizing or catastrophizing.

Nice to have

• RISE with SAP private cloud operations experience and hyperscaler platform knowledge (Azure, AWS, or GCP).
• SAP MaxAttention or Enterprise Support engagement management.
• Automation and infrastructure-as-code for SAP operations; scripting in shell, Python, or Ansible.
• BTP platform operations, connectivity, and Cloud Connector management.
• SAP security, GRC, and audit experience in a regulated or publicly listed environment.
• Manufacturing or industrial operations context, where plant downtime has immediate physical and revenue consequence.

Details

• Location: Bangalore.