Senior Technical Services Manager - BASIS:Johannesburg

Job Description

We help the world run better
At SAP, we keep it simple: you bring your best to us, and we'll bring out the best in you. We're builders touching over 20 industries and 80% of global commerce, and we need your unique talents to help shape what's next. The work is challenging – but it matters. You'll find a place where you can be yourself, prioritize your wellbeing, and truly belong. What's in it for you? Constant learning, skill growth, great benefits, and a team that wants you to grow and succeed.

At SAP, we enable you to bring out your best. Our company culture is focused on collaboration and a shared passion to help the world run better. We focus every day on building the foundation for tomorrow and creating a workplace that embraces differences, values flexibility, and aligns to our purpose-driven and future-focused work. We offer a highly collaborative, caring team environment with a strong focus on learning and development, recognition for your individual contributions, and a variety of benefit options for you to choose from. The mission of SAP Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) is to shape the future of SAP by providing a comprehensive, end-to-end managed services experience that supports customers throughout their cloud transformation journey. Our goal is to offer a range of cloud deployment options leveraging SAP infrastructure, partner infrastructures, and hyperscaler public cloud platforms.

THE ROLE

The Technical Service Manager (TSM) serves as the primary technical point of contact for SAP Enterprise Cloud Services customers, mainly focusing on HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition, S/4HANA Cloud Extended Edition, and HANA Enterprise Cloud Advanced Edition. The TSM drives end-to-end technical engagement from onboarding onwards, including customer onboarding, continuous service delivery, technical governance, architecture discussions, release and maintenance planning, service optimization, escalation handling, and technical advisory across the customer lifecycle. The TSM is expected to maintain high customer satisfaction through proactive issue mitigation, technical leadership, and strong stakeholder engagement while helping customers maximize the value of their SAP cloud transformation journey. The role acts as a trusted technical advisor to customers and partners by understanding customer business requirements, resolving technical complexities, and orchestrating cross-functional SAP teams to deliver quality services.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as the primary contact for customers for SAP technology discussions, innovations, technical escalations, incidents, and service requests.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with customer stakeholders and establish a trusted technical advisor status.
• Demonstrate accountability as the technical orchestrator for End-to-End service delivery across customer landscapes.
• Understand customer business goals, challenges, and technical requirements to recommend optimal SAP solutions and services.
• Offer comprehensive expertise on SAP S/4HANA architecture, migration paths, conversion methodologies, and technical tools.
• Understand SAP High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), network, virtualization, and hyperscaler technologies.
• Identify top technical issues, define service improvement plans, and drive implementation of technical action items.
• Design and optimize SAP configurations to maximize system performance, stability, and availability.
• Act as a de-escalation point for critical customer situations and coordinate resolution across SAP delivery units.
• Support the positioning of additional ECS offerings and contribute to contract renewals in alignment with SAP sales teams.
• Proactively manage operational and security risks by ensuring maintenance activities, compliance actions, and risk mitigations are completed on time.
• Create a culture of proactive problem management and continuous service improvement.
• Collaborate with SAP Enterprise Cloud Services delivery teams to establish long-term technical roadmaps and account strategies.

Education, Skills, and Competencies

Required Skills

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Technical Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related fields.
• Strong understanding of SAP Basis administration, SAP system migration, SAP HANA, and SAP landscape operations.
• Good understanding of SAP cloud business, cloud infrastructure, hybrid environments, and cloud operational processes.
• Hands-on experience with Unix/Linux environments, SAP HANA, and Sybase databases.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills in English with the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong customer engagement, stakeholder management, and de-escalation capabilities.
• Ability to manage multiple customer engagements in parallel within a global virtual organization.
• Proactive, problem-solving, “customer first” mindset with strong ownership and accountability.
• Strong collaboration skills with experience working in global and matrix organizations.

Preferred Skills

• SAP Basis/Application certifications are highly beneficial.
• Hyperscaler certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP) are considered a strong advantage.
• Knowledge of SAP IT operations standards and methodologies such as ITIL, SAP Solution Manager, SAP ALM, and Run SAP methodologies is beneficial.
• Experience with SAP High Availability and Disaster Recovery concepts is preferred.

Work Experience

• Total 12 to 16 years of experience in SAP Technical Administration, SAP Operations, SAP Basis, or SAP cloud technologies.
• Minimum 8+ years of experience in a customer-facing role within cloud services or IT consulting environments.
• Minimum 4 implementation projects and 4 AMS/support project experiences.
• Strong experience handling mission-critical customer situations and escalations.

WHY JOIN US

This is an exciting opportunity to join SAP’s dynamic and international Enterprise Cloud Services organization and make a significant impact on customers’ cloud transformation journeys. If you are passionate about SAP technologies, customer success, technical leadership, and cloud innovation, this role offers an opportunity to work with strategic customers, cutting-edge SAP cloud technologies, and highly collaborative global teams while contributing to SAP’s cloud-first future.

Bring out your best
SAP innovations help more than four hundred thousand customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with two hundred million users and more than one hundred thousand employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, you can bring out your best.

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.

SAP is committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provides accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: Careers@sap.com.

For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for the SAP Employee Referral Program, according to the eligibility rules set in the SAP Referral Policy. Specific conditions may apply for roles in Vocational Training.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability, in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local legal requirements.

Successful candidates might be required to undergo a background verification with an external vendor.

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.

Requisition ID: 453822 | Work Area: Information Technology | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Professional | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid