Senior Manager SAP Basis and Cloud Leader

Xylem is a Fortune 500 global water solutions company dedicated to advancing sustainable impact and empowering the people who make water work every day. As a leading water technology company with 23,000 employees operating in over 150 countries, Xylem is at the forefront of addressing the world's most critical water challenges. We invite passionate individuals to join our team, dedicated to exceeding customer expectations through innovative and sustainable solutions.

This role is responsible for the availability, performance, security, and technical operations of the SAP platform landscape. The leader governs SAP infrastructure, cloud services, environments, upgrades, monitoring, and disaster recovery capabilities to ensure uninterrupted business operations. As custodian of the SAP technical foundation, the role protects mission-critical applications supporting global operations. The position is essential for maintaining system resilience, scalability, and cybersecurity throughout the transformation journey. Reliable platform operations are fundamental to business continuity and long-term ERP success.

Landscape operations and availability

• Own end-to-end technical operations for the global S/4HANA landscape and connected SAP systems —
  
  

availability, stability, and service levels against business-agreed commitments.

• Manage the RISE with SAP relationship operationally: 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: 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.

Performance management and system optimization

• Own system-level performance: 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 — 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 rather than initial estimates.

• Lead data volume management, archiving, and data aging strategy to keep the landscape performant as
  
  

scope and history grow.

• Partner closely with the Business Performance Management Leader — they own transaction and code-level
  
  

performance, you own the platform it runs on. Neither problem gets solved by pointing at the other

Backup, recovery, and resilience

• Own the backup and recovery strategy end to end: backup design and scheduling, retention policy, log backup
  
  

management, and validated restore capability across all environments.

• Define and defend RPO and RTO commitments per system with the business, and prove them — restore
  
  

testing on a published cadence, not an assumed capability.

• 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 have to
  
  

execute them at three in the morning.

• Maintain audit-ready evidence of backup integrity, restore validation, and DR test outcomes.
  
  

Landscape management and security operations

• 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: 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 within required windows.

• Own monitoring and observability across the landscape — Focused Run, Cloud ALM, EarlyWatch, and
  
  

integration with enterprise monitoring — with alerting that drives action rather than noise.

Deployment and team leadership

• Provide Basis readiness for every deployment wave: 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.
  
  

Qualifications

Required

• 15+ years in SAP Basis and technical operations, with at least 5 years leading global teams.
• Deep hands-on S/4HANA Basis expertise — installation, migration, upgrade, and operations at global scale.
• Expert-level HANA database administration: 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 either minimizing or catastrophizing.

Preferred

• 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.

Success in the First 12 Months

Published availability and performance SLOs with the business, and delivery against them. A validated backup

and restore capability with tested RPO and RTO, not assumed. A completed DR exercise with documented

results and closed gaps. A clear, agreed RACI across Xylem, SAP, the hyperscaler, and AMS with no unowned

space in it. Reduced technical incident volume and faster mean time to resolution. And clean Basis readiness

through every deployment wave, with downtime inside committed windows.

Operating Principles You Will Work Under

• Products, not projects. Persistent teams aligned to value streams, funded by capacity rather than project
  
  

cycles, each paired with a business process owner accountable for the outcome.

• Clean core is non-negotiable. Extensions live on BTP, the core stays standard, and custom code is
  
  

governed at the point of creation.

• Paved road, not toll booth. Golden paths, reference architectures, and reusable patterns, with guardrails
  
  

enforced in the pipeline rather than in a design authority meeting.

• Compliance by default. Controls are designed into the platform and evidenced automatically, so control
  
  

integrity holds at deployment scale.

• Accountable for value, not volume. Success is measured in business process KPIs, adoption, and realized
  
  

value, not tickets closed or hours delivered.

• Intelligent enterprise by design. AI and agent enablement, and the data readiness that makes both credible,
  
  

are owned capabilities.

• Global template authority, local execution. Template integrity is held centrally through the current
  
  

deployment horizon, with a defined path to greater product-team autonomy.

Join the global Xylem team to be a part of innovative technology solutions transforming water usage, conservation, and re-use. Our products impact public utilities, industrial sectors, residential areas, and commercial buildings, with a commitment to providing smart metering, network technologies, and advanced analytics for water, electric, and gas utilities. Partner with us in creating a world where water challenges are met with ingenuity and dedication; where we recognize the power of inclusion and belonging in driving innovation and allowing us to compete more effectively around the world.