SAP Technical Lead

Thames Water Utilities Limited; Reading; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 83,000; Full time

Job summary

Thames Water is looking for a SAP Technical Lead to drive digital transformation in Reading. This role involves leading design and implementation of SAP solutions, ensuring technical quality and engaging with stakeholders to develop a robust integration strategy. The ideal candidate will have extensive SAP knowledge and a collaborative mindset, contributing to both team success and operational excellence.

Benefits

Annual Leave - 26 days holiday per year, increasing to 30 with length of service.

Annual bonus.

Private medical healthcare.

Generous Pension Scheme through AON.

Access to family health and well-being benefits.

Qualifications

• Expert-level knowledge of SAP applications required.
• Experience in managing SAP implementations and governance.
• Strong problem-solving and performance management skills.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for successful SAP implementations and solution governance.
• Lead the technical design and deployment of SAP solutions.
• Mentor colleagues and ensure best practices in SAP are followed.

Skills

SAP ECC

S/4HANA

SAP Ariba

SuccessFactors

Service Cloud

DevOps

Education

Extensive experience with SAP applications

More than 4 years of hands-on experience with SAP ECC and S/4HANA

Job description

Job title SAP Technical Lead Ref 39490 Division Digital Location Hybrid - Clearwater Court - RG1 8DB Contract type Permanent Full/Part-time Full-time Salary Offering between £65,000 - £83,000 per annum, depending on experience Job grade C Closing date 23/07/2025

In Team Digital, we’re planning for a future where the technology solutions we co-create and design enable us to achieve our goal of protecting our greatest natural resource and allow our customers, communities and the environment to thrive.

As a team, our vision is to create an everyday digital experience for the people we serve - our customers - by putting them at the heart of everything we do. As part of our award-winning team, you’ll help the business become an intelligent, connected organisation to deliver our digital transformation and turnaround.

As a SAP Technical Lead, you’ll be supporting the data & integration strategy working with various stakeholders from different projects. Working in a DevOps model, you will be responsible for the delivery of new apps/integrations within the SAP Integration Suite whilst also supporting operational resilience and platform stability.

You will be responsible for the success of SAP implementations and ensure the technical quality, governance, and operationalisation of the solutions. This position requires deep experience with SAP applications, including expert-level knowledge of SAP ECC, S/4HANA, and SAP cloud applications like Ariba, SuccessFactors, and Service Cloud. You will act as the product owner and be responsible for defining the stories and backlog, prioritising the workload of interfaces.

As a technical expert, you will be willing to assist the development of others whilst also developing your knowledge. You will ensure best practices are followed and look for opportunities for improvement.

What you’ll be doing as a SAP Technical Lead

Design & Development:

• Create the high-level design of SAP solutions and guide on the choice of SAP components and patterns to use in the detailed design and implementation.
• Work with technical and non-technical stakeholders to translate functional and non-functional requirements into SAP implementations.
• Develop new solutions and amend/enhance existing solutions according to the customer’s requirements.
• Collaborate with project/product teams to create, design and deliver a range of re-useable cloud solutions using SAP applications.
• Convert business requirements into practical solutions, delivering high-quality products that are fit for purpose, robust and secure.
• Led all technical design, development, testing, continuous improvement, maintenance and support of corporate solutions to support strategic insight and analytical decisions.
• Lead a development, testing and support team of engineers to support and enhance existing solutions and to deliver new solutions.
• Work closely with business stakeholders and product owners to scope and estimate project activities, including the solutions delivery roadmap through to development, testing and signoff of delivered solutions.
• Perform peer checking of colleagues’ deliverables, ensuring outcomes follow best-practice and meet expected standards.
• Ensure that deliverables that are ready for deployment are fit for purpose, and meet the standards, quality targets and requirements (both functional and non-functional).

Platform Support:

• Advise technical teams on performance, scalability, versioning, reliability, monitoring, and other operational concerns of SAP solutions.
• Support stakeholders in troubleshooting with existing solutions.
• Accountability for the management of any production incidents or problems.
• Document and direct the handover of solutions into business-as-usual (BAU) operations to support a robust service transition.
• Own and manage deployments of new releases to the production environment.
• Identify areas of continuous improvement and create effective solutions to implement them.
• Become a key contributor and advocate of SAP best practices and frameworks in projects and programs.
• Continually reviewing the development and approaches to ensure base standards are consistent and the latest platform features are being used.
• Assist in reviewing the existing SAP landscape, increase reuse and expand our monitoring capabilities.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Engage with internal stakeholders to understand requirements, define solutions, and agree on the definition of done.

Mentoring and training:

• Undertake mentoring and cross-training of colleagues using your skillset to develop others.

Team planning and review:

• Participate in team DevOps ceremonies (sprint planning, show and tell, sprint review etc), providing valued input and being an excellent team player.

Base Location: Reading - Hybrid

Working Pattern: 36 Hours

What you should bring to the role

We want to bring together a team of brilliant tech minds with game-changing ideas. We’re looking for people who will help us re-imagine the way we work and the way we get things done:

• A truly digital mindset. Open to collaboration. Open to risk. Open to new ways of doing things.
• Obsessed with data. Obsessed with excellence.
• People who think and behave differently to the way we do. People who don’t want to just be another cog in the machine.
• Extensive experience with SAP applications (development, testing, and deployment experience) and more than 4 years of hands-on experience with SAP ECC and S/4HANA
• Hands-on development experience with SAP best practices and standards.
• Expertise in different components/capabilities of SAP Cloud applications – SAP Ariba, SuccessFactors, Service Cloud.
• Strong experience in leveraging standard SAP content to build solutions for interfaces between SAP applications.
• Strong expertise in designing solutions in SAP and their components – Communication channels, adapters, message transformation, routings, and groovy scripts.
• Expertise in SAP message logging capabilities and typical error handling & monitoring mechanisms.
• Strong experience in designing reusable assets, components, standards, frameworks, and processes to support and facilitate SAP projects (RAML, REST, SOAP)
• Experience working within a DevOps environment and the related processes and controls

What’s in it for you?

• Offering between £65,000 - £83,000 per annum, depending on experience.
• Annual Leave - 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service. (plus bank holidays)
• Annual bonus.
• Private medical healthcare.
• Generous Pension Scheme through AON.
• Access to lots of benefits to help you take care of your and your family’s health and well-being, and your finances – from annual health MOTs and access to physiotherapy and counselling to Cycle to Work schemes, shopping vouchers and life assurance.

We’re the UK’s largest water and wastewater company, with more than 16 million customers relying on us every day to supply water for their taps and toilets. We want to build a better future for all, helping our customers, communities, people, and the planet to thrive. It’s a big job and we’ve got a long way to go, so we need help from passionate and skilled people, committed to making a difference and getting us to where we want to be in the years and decades to come.

Thames Water is a unique, rewarding, and diverse place to work, where every day you can make a difference, yet no day is the same. As part of our family, you’ll enjoy fast-tracked career opportunities, flexible working arrangements and excellent benefits.

Whether you’re interested in a role in one of our call centres or science labs, we’re looking for people like you with real passion and a burning desire to make things better.

So, if you’re looking for a sustainable and successful career where you can make a daily difference to millions of people’s lives while helping to protect the world of water for future generations, we’ll be here to support you every step of the way. Together, we can build a better future for our customers, our region and our planet.

Real purpose, real support, real opportunities. Come and join the Thames Water family. Why choose us? Learn more.

Our overarching aim is to ensure that Thames Water is great, diverse, and inclusive place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and offer extra support for those who need it throughout the recruitment process . Our aim is to remove any real or perceived barriers to success, so if you need assistance, we’re here to help and support .

When a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of Team Thames, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up to support our customers on the frontline as an ambassador. Full training will be given for what is undoubtedly an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about our business and meet colleagues.

Disclaimer: due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.