Location: Hybrid - London office 3 days per week
Project: SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Evolution
About the Role
Our client is a global, purpose-led organisation delivering high-impact projects that shape public policy and drive social change. We are seeking an experienced SAP Solution Architect to own and evolve a live SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud landscape. This is not a greenfield implementation role - the successful candidate will support, stabilise, and continuously improve a system already in production, driving process optimisation, release readiness, and cross-functional design integrity across core finance and operational processes.
The role requires deep, hands-on process ownership across Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Order-to-Cash (O2C), and Record-to-Report (R2R), alongside a strong command of Professional Services processes, and technical fluency in role/authorisation management and workflow design.
Key Responsibilities
- Act as the primary Solution Architect for the live S/4HANA Public Cloud environment, owning end-to-end process design and system integrity across P2P, O2C, and R2R.
- Manage the SAP Public Cloud release cycle: assess quarterly updates, run impact analysis, coordinate regression testing, and ensure business continuity through each release.
- Translate business requirements into fit-to-standard solution designs within the constraints of SAP Public Cloud's clean-core methodology, using standard configuration and the Business Technology Platform (BTP) for extensions where required.
- Own and maintain the roles and authorisations framework - actioning, designing, reviewing, and governing business roles, restriction types, and segregation-of-duties (SoD) controls.
- Design, configure, and troubleshoot SAP Business Workflow processes across approval chains (e.g. purchase requisitions, invoices, journal entries, sales orders).
- Provide architectural oversight for Professional Services processes - resource management, project billing, time and expense capture, and revenue recognition integration with R2R.
- Partner with Finance, Procurement, Sales, and Delivery/PS teams to identify process improvement opportunities and translate them into system enhancements.
- Manage integration touchpoints between P2P, O2C, R2R, and Professional Services modules, ensuring data and process consistency end-to-end.
- Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of live-environment incidents, working with SAP support (BCP/OCC) where escalation is required.
- Produce and maintain solution documentation, process maps, and design decisions for audit and knowledge continuity.
- Support internal audit and controls testing, particularly around SoD, workflow approvals, and financial process integrity.
- Manage the Application Management Services (AMS) vendor relationship - ticket triage and prioritisation, SLA/KPI monitoring, escalation management, and quality review of vendor-delivered fixes and enhancements.
- Act as the escalation and governance point between the business and the AMS partner, ensuring vendor delivery aligns with architectural standards and does not introduce technical debt or clean-core violations.
Essential Experience & Skills
Core Platform
- Proven experience architecting or supporting a live SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud environment (not solely implementation experience) - comfortable with the fit-to-standard model, quarterly release cadence, and clean-core extensibility principles.
Process Coverage
- Order-to-Cash (O2C): sales order management, pricing, billing, credit management, accounts receivable.
- Record-to-Report (R2R): GL, financial close, reconciliation, reporting (financial and management).
- Professional Services: project/resource management, time & expense, project billing, revenue recognition - ideally with exposure to SAP's Professional Services Cloud/PS-specific processes.
Technical/Governance
- Strong working knowledge of roles and authorisation management in SAP Public Cloud - business role design, restriction types, SoD analysis.
- Hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting SAP Business Workflow (approval flows, agent determination, workflow monitoring).
- Experience managing an AMS (Application Management Services) vendor - SLA governance, ticket/backlog management, escalation handling, and holding third-party delivery to solution and quality standards.
General
- Strong stakeholder management skills - able to work directly with Finance, Procurement, Sales, and Professional Services leadership.
- Experience producing solution architecture documentation, design decisions, and audit-ready process evidence.
- Comfortable operating in a live, business-critical environment with minimal disruption tolerance.