Software Engineering Principal

Job Description

About the role

The Principal – Procurement & AI Delivery is BT Digital's strategic and technical authority for the end-to-end SAP Source-to-Pay (S2P) and Procurement technology estate. This is a principal-level leadership role spanning SAP S/4HANA Procurement, SAP Ariba (now rebuilt as an AI-native platform on SAP BTP), SAP Concur, Sirion CLM, Nnamu, Who Buys What spend visibility, and a growing portfolio of cloud-native and AI-powered procurement tools.

BT manages billions in annual procurement spend across direct and indirect categories, and the Procurement technology estate is the intelligence layer that governs how that spend is sourced, contracted, approved, paid, and optimised. As the world's leading Source-to-Pay platforms undergo their most significant AI transformation in a decade — with SAP Ariba rebuilt from the ground up on SAP BTP with embedded Joule agents, and Sirion CLM recognised as the Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for the fourth consecutive year — BT Digital needs a Principal who can navigate this landscape with authority and turn SAP and third-party AI innovation into competitive advantage for BT.

This is not a BAU technology management role. It is a transformation leadership position — owning the multi-year Procurement technology roadmap, driving AI adoption across the S2P lifecycle, governing the commercial and licence estate, and building the technical SME capability that BT Digital needs to operate at the frontier of AI-powered procurement.

What you will be doing (Role Accountabilities)

Your 16 Core Accountabilities:

1. Procurement Tech Roadmap: Own and maintain BT’s multi-year procurement technology strategy, aligned with BT’s principles.

2. Architecture & Governance: Define the path to a clean-core, AI-enabled procurement architecture, including legacy tool sunset plans.

3. SAP Ariba Adoption: Lead BT’s migration to AI-native SAP Ariba, managing strategy, pilots, and deployment of AI agents.

4. Emerging AI Capabilities: Evaluate and develop plans for new procurement AI tools, translating innovation into evidence-based investments.

5. Sirion CLM Strategy: Oversee BT’s contract lifecycle management strategy, ensuring AI capabilities are compliant and effective.

6. Spend Visibility & Intelligence: Drive BT’s spend analysis, maverick spend detection, and forecasting to enable faster, smarter decisions.

7. Business Cases & Investment: Lead business case development for procurement tech investments, ensuring rigorous, evidence-backed proposals.

8. SAP Licence Optimization: Manage SAP procurement licensing, minimizing risks and optimizing costs.

9. Capability Building: Develop technical SME skills across procurement platforms through training, certification, and mentorship.

10. Governance & KPIs: Create and monitor dashboards and KPIs to track procurement tech performance and AI adoption.

11. Problem Management & Service Quality: Lead problem resolution, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement initiatives.

12. AI Transformation Delivery: Oversee procurement AI strategy, pilots, and deployment, ensuring evidence-led scaling and value realization.

13. Data Strategy & Governance: Manage procurement AI data pipelines, ensuring security, compliance, and effective analytics enablement.

14. Responsible AI Governance: Maintain ethical AI standards, transparency, and compliance across procurement AI applications.

15. Vendor & SAP Partnership: Act as BT’s interface with SAP and vendors, aligning product roadmaps and ensuring early access to innovations.

16. Knowledge Sharing & Assurance: Lead knowledge-sharing initiatives and provide technical assurance for procurement technology projects.

What you’ll need to succeed (Skills & Experience)

Desirable Skills / Experience

Must Have

• Deep S2P Domain Expertise: End-to-end Source-to-Pay process ownership — from Sourcing and Contracting through Purchase-to-Pay, Invoice Management, and Supplier Performance — ideally across both SAP and non-SAP procurement platforms.

• SAP Ariba & S/4HANA Procurement: Strong hands-on knowledge of SAP Ariba (sourcing, contracting, buying, supplier management) and SAP S/4HANA MM/SRM procurement processes — including clean-core principles, BTP integration, and the next-gen Ariba architecture.

• Contract Lifecycle Management: Experience governing CLM platforms — ideally Sirion — including AI-assisted contract authoring, obligation tracking, compliance monitoring, and the governance of agentic CLM capabilities.

• Commercial & Investment Acumen: Demonstrated ability to build MTP business cases, manage licence estates, identify cost transformation opportunities, and govern procurement technology investment with Finance Business Partner-level rigour.

• AI Strategy & Transformation Leadership: Proven experience leading AI transformation programmes in a procurement or enterprise technology context — including AI pilot design, evidence-led scaling, responsible AI governance, and stakeholder adoption management.

• Stakeholder Leadership: Ability to engage, influence, and partner with Group Procurement Directors, CFO-level Finance stakeholders, Digital Directors, and vendor leadership — translating complex procurement technology decisions into clear business outcomes.

• Architecture & Governance: Ability to define and govern procurement technology architecture — BTP integration patterns, clean-core design principles, data governance frameworks, and cross-platform interoperability standards.

Good to Have

• Experience with SAP Concur (T&E) governance and AI-assisted expense automation.
• Familiarity with spend visibility tools — Nnamu, Who Buys What, Coupa, or equivalent AI-powered spend analytics platforms.
• Exposure to SAP Business Network supplier collaboration and Ariba Network supplier onboarding.
• Knowledge of autonomous sourcing platforms, AI-powered supplier risk intelligence, and procurement ESG compliance tools.
• CIPS, SAP certification (Ariba, S/4HANA Procurement), or equivalent professional procurement technology qualification.
• Experience working in a large enterprise (FTSE 100 / Fortune 500) procurement technology leadership role.
Familiarity with Icertis, DocuSign, or other CLM and eSignature platforms complementary to Sirion.

BT Behaviour and How This Principal Role Lives It

🟣 Customer First: Listen. Learn. Change for them.

🟠 Challengers: Think big. Lead fearlessly. Stay curious.

🔵 Committed: Step up. Stay with it. See it through.

🟢 Clear: Cut complexity. Find the fix. Say it how it is.

🔴 Connected: Back each other. Break silos. Win as one.

BT is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.

BT ’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.