Senior Strategic Program Manager (f/m/d), People & Culture

Company Description

Job Description

What you'll bring

• At least 10 years of experience in program management, transformation delivery, or management consulting
• A consulting background (Big 4, strategy, HR consultancy, or in an internal transformation office at a large enterprise)
• Working knowledge of HR and people topics with the ability to engage credibly across workforce planning, talent, rewards, org design, and change management
• Hands-on comfort with AI and digital tools as a practitioner, not just a strategist
• The ability to move between strategic thinking and operational execution without friction: you facilitate a leadership workshop and build the follow-up deck yourself
• Exceptional English communication skills, written and spoken
• Experience in large, matrixed organizations, ideally across multiple functions or geographies

What you'll build

We offer a senior individual contributor role with significant organizational influence and no direct reports. You will be part of a Business Partner (BP) organization that is actively transforming how it operates, backed by SAP’s broader ambition to build a skills-led, AI-enabled organization across more than 110,000 employees globally. Your tasks will include, but are not limited to:

• Run the strategic PMO for the Corporate Functions BP cluster: portfolio visibility, dependency management, risk identification, leadership reporting
• Lead two to three strategic projects personally, from scoping through execution to measurable outcomes
• Own the AI and tooling enablement agenda for the BP community, working across CP IT (Corporate Processes & Information Technology), business operations, and AI champions
• Partner with the Business Partner Lead and team to clarify priorities, translate strategic objectives into actionable plans, and ensure focus on the most critical topics
• Align and manage effective meeting cadences, agendas, follow-ups, and decision processes to ensure transparency, accountability, and timely execution
• Support M&A integration workstreams on the people side, including Day 1 readiness and organizational harmonization
• Collaborate with the cluster PMOs for Customer Value Group and Product & Engineering on shared governance and alignment
• Optimize the overall project portfolio: challenge priorities, surface trade-offs, support leadership decisions

What Sets This Role Apart

The AI mandate. You will own the AI and tooling enablement agenda for the Business Partner community end to end: identifying use cases, partnering with internal IT and product teams, driving adoption of tools like Joule, managing new agent rollouts, and ensuring Business Partners are freed from operational drag to focus on strategic work. This agenda is early-stage and needs someone who can build momentum fast.

The breadth. In any given week you may move from a post-acquisition integration workstream to a talent development rollout to a portfolio prioritization discussion with leadership. You need to get productive on unfamiliar topics quickly, which is exactly why a consulting background is so valuable here.

The impact. You will work directly with the P&C leadership team on initiatives that shape how thousands of SAP employees across Corporate Functions experience their HR partners.

Where you belong

You will be the strategic PMO for SAP’s Corporate Functions Business Partner community: roughly 60 HR Business Partners supporting the People & Culture, Finance & Administration, Office of the CEO, and Strategy & Operations Board Areas.

You sit at the intersection of SAP’s People Agenda. Projects come from across the Centers of Excellence and span strategic workforce planning, talent development, leadership development, total rewards, organization design, and change management. Your job is to maintain a solid portfolio view across these initiatives, run select topics yourself, and ensure the Corporate Functions BP perspective is represented throughout. Critically, you make sure Business Partners are equipped to drive adoption and enablement of these topics in front of the business leadership teams they support.

This role reports into the HR Business Partner leadership for Corporate Functions, and you collaborate directly with other senior managers and executives being part of the P&C Board Area Leadership Team.

Qualifications

Additional Information

About SAP
With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improves people’s lives.
As a leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience.

We win with inclusion
SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better world.
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AI Usage in the Recruitment Process
For information on the responsible use of AI in our recruitment process, please refer to our Guidelines for Ethical Usage of AI in the Recruiting Process.
Please note that any violation of these guidelines may result in disqualification from the hiring process.