Director I, SAP Technology Lead - Retail

Category/Area of Expertise: IT & Technology
Job Requisition: 482653
Address: USA-NC-Salisbury-2110 Executive Drive
Store Code: IT Executive & Administration (5167689)

Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, is part of the U.S. family of brands, which includes five leading omnichannel grocery brands - Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Our associates support the brands with a wide range of services, including Finance, Legal, Sustainability, Commercial, Digital and E-commerce, Technology and more.

Primary Purpose

The Director, SAP Technology Lead - Retail serves as the senior authority for SAP Retail solutions, playing a critical role in delivering ADUSA's Retail Spine ERP transformation. This position is responsible for leading the end-to-end design, delivery, implementation, and ongoing support of core retail capabilities, including order management, fulfillment, pricing, availability, and customer data across store, eCommerce, pickup, and delivery channels using SAP S/4HANA Retail and associated platforms such as SAP CAR and integrated retail and digital commerce solutions. A key aspect of this role is ensuring seamless integration across merchandising, supply chain, store operations, and digital commerce platforms to enable consistent, real-time retail execution and enterprise visibility.

The Director ensures that all solutions are scalable, high performing, and consistently deliver the expected outcomes. In collaboration with a supply chain business partner, this leader leverages resources across IT and third-party systems integration partners to achieve successful results. As the accountable owner of these outcomes, the Director translates strategic goals into fit-for-standard, future-ready solutions that are aligned with ADUSA's long-term roadmap.

The role involves shaping enterprise standards, driving cross-workstream alignment, and ensuring effective execution throughout all phases of the program. Emphasizing an AI-first approach, the Director enables optimized processes and prioritizes automation beyond SAP for the best possible outcomes. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in SAP S/4HANA Retail, strong executive leadership capabilities, and a proven track record delivering large-scale ERP transformations in complex retail environments.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Our flexible/ hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days at our Salisbury, NC office and 2 remote days.

Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Transformation Execution

• Provide strategic leadership and ownership of SAP Retail delivery on RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, from Fit-to-Standard design through deployment, stabilization and post go-live support.
• Act as the technical authority for SAP Order Management, SAP CAR, and availability/pricing services and Clean Core and SAP Best Practices, ensuring solutions are cloud-compliant, upgrade-safe, and aligned to SAP and retail standards.

• Own delivery outcomes across the System Integrator and SAP RISE ecosystem, holding all partners accountable for scope execution, solution quality, and business results.
• Establish and enforce design governance, architecture standards, and release controls, ensuring solutions align with Clean Core principles, RISE service boundaries, and enterprise cloud operating models.
• Drive end-to-end delivery accountability across internal teams and external partners, proactively managing risks, dependencies, performance metrics, and corrective actions to ensure on-time, on-quality execution.
• Ensure RISE environments, transports, and testing strategies align to SAP Activate and enterprise DevOps standards.

• Lead the detailed SAP S/4HANA functional and technical design and configuration across relevant modules, including solution architecture, configuration workbooks (IMG), data objects, interfaces, and enhancements-ensuring alignment to Fit-to-Standard and Clean Core principles.
• Partner with the Brand Retail Operations leads to govern Fit-to-Standard decisions to balance business differentiation with standardization and long-term maintainability.
• Own the end-to-end integration across SAP and non-SAP platforms, defining APIs, event-driven patterns, and middleware flows (e.g., SAP BTP Integration Suite) to ensure seamless, real-time process execution across merchandising, supply chain, and omnichannel systems.
• Translate business needs into SAP S/4HANA designs and configurations, and validate solutions through end-to-end testing.
• Ensure seamless upstream/downstream integration with Merchandising, Supply Chain, POS, eCommerce, and last-mile platforms.
• Govern ATP / sourcing logic for BOPIS, ship-from-store, and DC fulfillment.
• Influence and adopt the enterprise mobility strategy to design and build associate facing applications that interface with SAP.
• Deliver reporting, analytics and AI capabilities integrated with SAP on RISE.
• Drive adoption of embedded S/4HANA and RISE innovations.

• Provide inspirational leadership and direction for a purpose-driven team, with direct accountability for talent management activities including recruiting and leading a high performing team, developing technical and functional capabilities through targeted upskilling programs, conducting performance management, and retaining critical expertise throughout the multi-year transformation journey.
• Upskill and coach internal IT teams and SMEs on cloud mindset, Clean Core, and SAP Best Practices.
• Establish clear roles, responsibilities, governance structures, decision-making frameworks, and engagement cadences across key stakeholders within and outside the transformation program.
• Foster a culture of inclusion, collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement while actively modeling ADUSA's core values and partnership behaviors to drive engagement, knowledge sharing, and shared success across the transformation ecosystem.

• Partner with transformation change management and communications leads to develop and execute targeted messaging strategies addressing organizational change impacts.
• Actively engage with business leaders to co-create transition roadmaps, align on deployment wave sequencing, define stabilization success criteria, and establish realistic expectations for capability rollout timelines and business benefits realization.
• Serve as the primary escalation point and trusted advisor for operational risk identification throughout each deployment wave, proactively proposing mitigation strategies.
• Lead executive and governance committee presentations and business readiness assessments, translating complex technical concepts into business value narratives that resonate with C-suite stakeholders.

• Define and track functional success metrics (e.g., system adoption and operational continuity).
• Lead cutover planning, stabilization governance, and lessons-learned cycles following deployment.
• Ensure successful implementation and DC/store go-live, including training, SOPs, and escalation procedures.

• Ability to travel as needed to support business and brand alignment.
• Additional job duties may be assigned as needed to meet the needs of the business and support our Values.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline required; Master's degree in Business, Technology, or Retail Management preferred.
• 12-15+ years of progressive SAP experience with deep focus on retail domains, including senior leadership roles on large-scale SAP S/4HANA Retail transformation programs within grocery, mass retail, consumer goods, or multi-brand retail environments.
• Demonstrated hands-on architecture and functional expertise across SAP S/4HANA Retail, including article and master data management, merchandising, assortment and allocation, pricing and promotions, SD, CAR, and omnichannel integration, with proven experience designing end-to-end retail processes spanning procure-to-sell and order-to-cash.
• Proven track record leading full-lifecycle SAP transformations (strategy through stabilization), including blueprinting, fit-to-standard design, clean-core alignment, build governance, testing oversight, cutover execution, and post-go-live optimization.
• Experience operating in complex, high-volume retail environments with strong understanding of merchandising economics, promotional funding, margin optimization, inventory visibility, and omnichannel capabilities such as BOPIS and ship-from-store.
• Demonstrated leadership of large cross-functional teams in a modern IT operating model that includes System Integrators, SaaS platforms, digital commerce solutions, and federated IT structures; ability to drive accountability across internal and external partners.
• Experience leading post-implementation SAP Retail operations, including production support governance, release management, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Proven capability delivering data-driven retail insights, including embedded analytics, self-service reporting, pricing and promotion analytics, KPI dashboards, and integration of advanced analytics or AI/automation use cases within SAP-enabled retail processes.
• Strong financial and business acumen with experience managing transformation budgets, investment prioritization, margin-impact analysis, and value realization tracking.
• Exceptional executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, facilitate complex trade-off decisions (standard vs. custom vs. best-of-breed), and align business and technology leadership around retail transformation outcomes.
• Strategic yet hands-on leadership style with demonstrated success building, mentoring, and scaling high-performing retail technology teams.
• Willingness to travel as required to support program execution, stakeholder engagement, and multi-brand deployment alignment.

• Experience in grocery or big-box retail with high SKU velocity, complex DC networks, and store fulfillment models.
• Direct experience with RISE with SAP or SAP S/4HANA Cloud operating models.
• Strong understanding of SAP Clean Core strategy, SAP BTP extensibility, and cloud governance.
• Proven experience integrating SAP S/4HANA with best-of-breed platforms such as Manhattan and RELEX.
• Demonstrated success driving Fit-to-Standard and reducing technical debt/custom code.
• SAP certifications in S/4HANA Retail or related modules.

• Located at the ADUSA regional headquarters which are located just outside Charlotte, North Carolina (Salisbury).
• Competitive benefits package.
• Salary Range: $160,000 - $240,000
• Actual compensation offered to a candidate may vary based on their unique qualifications and experience, internal equity, and market conditions. Final compensation decisions will be made in accordance with company policies and applicable laws.