About Role:
Position Title: SAP Environment & Cutover Release Lead
Location: Calgary, AB
Workplace type: Onsite
Employment type: Full-time
Role Summary
The SAP Environment & Cutover Release Lead is responsible for planning, coordinating, governing, and executing environment management, release management, cutover activities, dress rehearsals, and production deployment readiness for the SAP S/4HANA transformation program. This role serves as the single point of accountability for ensuring that environments, releases, transports, deployment activities, and cutover tasks are aligned across business, IT, system integrators, and testing teams to enable a seamless and low-risk go-live.
Key Responsibilities
Environment Management
- Define and govern the environment strategy across all SAP landscapes, including Development (DEV), Quality Assurance (QA), System Integration Testing (SIT), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Pre-Production, and Production.
- Ensure environment availability, stability, and readiness for testing and deployment activities.
- Manage environment refreshes, data provisioning, and configuration synchronization.
- Coordinate with technical teams to resolve environment-related issues and mitigate risks.
- Maintain environment schedules, allocation plans, and usage coordination across multiple workstreams.
Release Management
- Establish and govern release management processes, standards, and deployment controls.
- Manage transport migrations and release deployments across SAP environments.
- Govern release scope, readiness criteria, implementation schedules, and approvals.
- Ensure compliance with organizational change management and quality assurance standards.
- Monitor release risks, dependencies, and production deployment readiness.
Cutover Planning & Governance
- Develop and maintain the overall cutover strategy and master cutover plan.
- Coordinate cutover activities across business, functional, technical, integration, and data migration teams.
- Define cutover runbooks, task sequencing, checkpoints, contingency plans, and escalation paths.
- Monitor cutover risks, dependencies, milestones, and critical-path activities.
- Lead cutover governance meetings, readiness reviews, and deployment decision-making processes.
Production Readiness & Go-Live Support
- Plan and execute cutover simulations, mock cutovers, and dress rehearsals.
- Validate deployment timelines, resource readiness, rollback strategies, and implementation procedures.
- Ensure business, technical, operational, and support teams are fully prepared for production deployment.
- Conduct production readiness assessments and stage-gate reviews.
- Validate completion of all pre-go-live activities and readiness criteria before deployment.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline.
- 8+ years of experience in SAP program delivery, release management, environment management, or cutover management.
- Proven experience leading SAP S/4HANA transformation deployments and large-scale enterprise go-live activities.
- Strong understanding of SAP project delivery methodologies, deployment governance, and change management processes.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional teams, including business stakeholders, system integrators, testing teams, and technical teams.
- Demonstrated ability to manage risks, dependencies, and complex deployment schedules.
Technical Skills
- SAP S/4HANA implementation and deployment experience.
- SAP Environment Management and Landscape Governance.
- SAP Release Management and Transport Management.
- SAP Change and Deployment Management.
- Cutover Planning, Execution, and Governance.
- Production Readiness Assessment and Go-Live Support.
- Environment Refresh and Data Provisioning Strategies.
- SAP Testing Lifecycle Support (SIT, UAT, Pre-Prod).
- Risk Management, Dependency Tracking, and Deployment Controls.
- Familiarity with SAP Solution Manager, ChaRM, ServiceNow, Jira, Azure DevOps, or equivalent release management tools.
- Strong reporting, planning, and project coordination capabilities.
Leadership & Behavioral Skills
- Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills.
- Excellent communication and presentation abilities.
- Ability to influence decision-making across business and technology teams.
- Strong organizational, planning, and governance capabilities.
- Proven problem-solving and analytical thinking skills.
- Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced transformation environment.
- Strong attention to detail with a focus on quality and execution excellence.
- Collaborative mindset with the ability to build relationships across teams and vendors.
Preferred Qualifications
- SAP S/4HANA project or transformation program experience.
- SAP certifications or relevant project/program management certifications (PMP, PRINCE2, Agile, SAFe).
- Experience with large-scale enterprise ERP transformation programs.
- Hands-on experience managing cutover rehearsals, mock deployments, and production go-live events.
- Experience working in regulated or highly governed enterprise environments.
- Knowledge of ITIL, change management frameworks, and release governance best practices.
- Experience managing offshore/onshore teams and multiple implementation partners.
If you're someone who thrives in fast-paced environments, takes initiative, and enjoys solving complex problems, we’d love to connect!
Apply now or reach out directly at [email protected] to learn more!
