Technical Operations Lead

The primary tasks for the Technical Operations Specialist include the proactive monitoring and maintenance of the entire SAP Landscape with key focus being analysing and planning of SAP maintenance tasks and system change’s together with the DevOps Operations/Technical manager of all technical (non-functional) projects/maintenance for the supported landscapes.

Ensure projects/ maintenance are on-time, within budget and managed according to standard processes (ITPM).

Provide 2nd level support during incidents by analysing system logs and overall system resources to identify problematic areas.

Ensure SAP Best practice methodology is utilized during the entire SAP life cycle.

Co-ordinate activities and provide the interface mechanism between Technical (Basis) and Functional operations in order for SAP to function both optimally and efficiently thereby ensuring the constant alignment and improvement of the SAP system.

Responsible for ensuring availability and performance of the SAP infrastructure and associated databases.

Work to ensure that the associated hardware resources allocated to the SAP databases are operating correctly and ensuring that they have a high level of resilience and performance.

Ensure that all periodic maintenance is carried out to ensure the optimal performance of all SAP related systems and databases in accordance with the Company standards.

Responsible for providing trend analysis to management team to enable them to make informed decisions regarding resource management.

Proactively monitor the SAP systems to ensure secure services with minimum downtime.

**Trouble shooting and maintenance**:
Responsible for troubleshooting and problem solving of SAP PRD, INT and DEV environments, as well as SANDBOX where applicable.

Responsible for improvement and maintenance of the environments including patch management and upgrades.

Responsible for implementation and release of database changes according to agreed timescales, costs and change control.

Ensuring that all transports between DEV and INT and DEV and PRD environments are fully documented and take place within the approved change control processes.

**Main Functions**:
SAP Technical Administration.

Incident and Request Management.

Change Request Management.

SAP Technical System Monitoring.

Project and Start-up Management.

SAP Transport Management.

**Example of types of Projects: Coordination of**:
Enhancement Pack / SPS Upgrades

NAS / SAN Migrations

Hardware Replacements

Maintenance projects (Index Compression, Table Re-orgs, Kernel Updates)

Master Release Updates (OS Patching)

Cluster Switch Tests.

**Critical Competencies**:
Policies and Procedures

Systems/Applications

Analytical

Communication

Problem Solving

Planning

Listening

Time Management

At least 10 years SAP Basis experience.

Extensive SAP knowledge - practical system knowledge of at least 7-10 years.

Solid experience of Project Management methodologies in an SAP environment.

**Proven knowledge/experience with the following technologies**: Unix, Oracle, SAP ABAP and JAVA based systems on NetWeaver release.

Proven experience with SAP system health checks, dump/trace analysis and monitoring tools.

Strong experience in Solution Manager Configuration for systems - CHARM and E2E Monitoring.

Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.

Ability to effectively articulate and communicate the pros and cons of creating a SAP Solution to solve a specific business need.

Strong organisational skills and attention to detail are a pre-requisite. Strong communication skills, verbal and written.

ITIL process knowledge and work experience advantageous.

ITIL Foundation V3 certification is advantageous

Agile/Scrum methodologies

SAP Technical (Basis) & Team Leadership Skills

SAP Basis skills (+10 years)

PaaS and IaaS knowledge

Cloud IaaS knowledge i.e., MS Azure; AWS

SAP HANA Database knowledge

SAP Oracle Database knowledge

SuSe Linux Operating System knowledge

Resource Planning and budget management

Driving the vision of the Sub Product in alignment with owning Product to ensure key results and targets are met

Ensure that Operational Key Performance Indicators (OpsKPI’s) for the Sub Product are met

Ensure that IM (Incident Management), CM (Change Management) and PM (Problem Management) topics assigned to the Sub Product adhere to the Quality and SLA requirements

Ensure that the development of systems solutions is in line with quality and delivery requirements

Ensure that the creation and updating of relevant system documentation for the Sub Product are in line with approved standards

Provide support with requests from Sub Product owners within the Product

Ensure the quality of the Sub Product by taking responsibility of the following tasks:
Creatin of Sub Product Backlogs

Refinement and priritization of Sub Product Backlog Items

Ensuring f the agreed quality (Team-DoR/-DoD and Stakeholder-Requirements)

Apprval of the developed Product