Senior SAP Solution Architect and Support Lead

UNESCO seeks a Senior SAP Solution Architect and Support Lead to ensure the operational continuity, technical integrity, and controlled evolution of its SAP landscape. This role is crucial for supporting preparations for future transformation and migration to SAP S/4HANA, as well as key transformational initiatives within the organization.

Job Purpose

The primary purpose of this assignment is to guarantee the seamless operational continuity, maintain the technical integrity, and manage the controlled evolution of UNESCO's SAP landscape. This involves actively supporting preparations for its future transformation and migration to SAP S/4HANA, alongside key organizational transformational initiatives. The role is designed as a multi-faceted senior position, requiring the consultant to function as an SAP solution and integration architect, a technical team lead, a coordinator for SAP support and development, and a senior technical and functional advisor. The consultant will also provide hands‑on development and troubleshooting when necessary, acting as a technical focal point for coordination with business owners, internal IT teams, implementation partners, banks, and other external service providers. This requires a blend of strategic architecture capabilities and deep knowledge of the existing solution, with the ability to intervene directly in its design, configuration, development, integration, and support.

Responsibilities

The consultant will provide overall technical and solution architecture leadership for the SAP domain, ensuring the coherence of SAP solutions, interfaces, custom developments, workflows, and security dependencies. Responsibilities include leading and coordinating the internal SAP team and external consultants, planning, prioritizing, and monitoring SAP support, maintenance, development, and transformation activities. The role involves coordinating dependencies between SAP and other corporate platforms like Salesforce and MuleSoft, and maintaining the SAP activity backlog and Jira dashboards. The consultant will prepare and present technical status updates, facilitate technical decision‑making, and review technical designs and code for compliance with architecture and quality standards. They will support incident resolution and take ownership of critical technical issues. Planning and facilitating workshops with business owners and technical teams to elicit and refine requirements is key. This includes translating business needs into structured process definitions, functional specifications, and technical requirements, while identifying and resolving gaps and ambiguities. The consultant will also support UNESCO's preparation for SAP S/4HANA migration by inventorying and assessing custom code, analyzing interfaces and workflows, and contributing to migration roadmaps. Exploration and application of agentic AI and automation within the SAP domain, including process mining and AI‑assisted support, are also part of the scope. Hands‑on ABAP development, interface modification, and advanced production support for critical issues will be required.

Work Experience

A minimum of 10 years of progressive professional experience in SAP architecture, implementation, development, integration, and production support is necessary. Demonstrated experience in a senior technical leadership, solution architecture, or team‑lead role is essential. Significant experience with complex, highly customized SAP ECC environments and supporting business‑critical operations involving multiple company codes and external applications is required. Experience in public‑sector or international organization financial management is relevant. The ability to combine architectural leadership with hands‑on technical delivery and coordinate multidisciplinary teams is crucial.

Skills

Strong architectural and analytical capabilities are essential, along with the ability to understand complex business processes and translate them into sustainable technical solutions. The consultant must possess strong leadership and team‑coordination skills, a pragmatic and hands‑on approach, and the ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities. Excellent problem‑solving, incident management, and communication skills, particularly in explaining complex technical matters to non‑technical stakeholders, are vital. Strong documentation and knowledge‑transfer abilities, along with the capacity to work collaboratively in a multicultural environment, are also required.