Sr. Manager, SAP Functional
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 6, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 14, 2026.
LyondellBasell is a leader in the global chemical industry creating solutions for everyday sustainable living. With a nearly 70-year legacy that includes a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and our proprietary MoReTec recycling technology, LYB is enabling a more sustainable future for generations to come. LYB develops high-quality and innovative products for applications ranging from sustainable transportation and food safety to clean water and quality healthcare. LYB places high priority on diversity, equity and inclusion and is Advancing Good with an emphasis on our planet, the communities where we operate and our future workforce. We're addressing the global challenges of ending plastic waste, taking climate action, and supporting a thriving society, while generating value for our customers, investors, and society.
Come Join an Inclusive Team
The ideal candidate should have a proven track record of leading Global SAP Operations and/or leading global SAP talent for company with outsourcing environment, focusing on optimizing business processes, maximizing team potential and ensuring service excellence. The role has 7 direct reports and the location is in either Rotterdam (NL) or Wesseling (GE).
A Day in the Life
The SAP Functional Leader owns the stability, optimization, and continuous improvement of core functional SAP modules. This leadership role ensures that business operations across Record to Report, Lead to Cash, Source to Pay and Hire to Retire run seamlessly on the SAP platform. It is a pivotal leadership role that bridges the gap between business needs and technical execution, managing cross-functional support teams and Application Managed Services (AMS) vendors. The position emphasizes building and nurturing a high-performance team of SAP professionals. The position will provide leadership guidance on all strategic initiatives around growing and upgrading the core, promoting continuous improvement and operational excellence. The SAP Functional leader will direct and appropriately participate in envisioning, planning, designing, implementing and supporting all related processes necessary to manage LYB’s SAP technology platform.
RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES:
- Operational Excellence
- Own SLAs and KPIs across all production and non-production functional environments;
- Drive ITIL governance standards for incident, problem, change, and release management;
- Minimize business disruption by managing critical escalations and conducting root-cause analysis;
- Govern business continuity planning and disaster recovery tests for functional systems;
- Collaborate with Service excellence team and Business stakeholders to help drive operational excellence and continuous improvements;
- Support value driven enhancements by providing standard solutions.
- Business Alignment and Stakeholder management
- Act as the primary liaison between the SAP team, key business stakeholders, the Enterprise Architects and Digital Transformation Leader ensuring effective communication and collaboration;
- Align SAP initiatives with business objectives, ensuring that the SAP CoE delivers value by improving performance, efficiency, and agility;
- Support relationships with SAP as primary service provide, SAP partners, and service providers to ensure quality service delivery and cost-effectiveness.
- Functional Optimization & Business Realization
- Translate business needs into optimized, scalable SAP configurations and system improvements;
- Govern change requests to ensure standard SAP features are preferred over complex custom code;
- Oversee integration testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for functional patches or upgrades;
- Align business processes across modules including SAP R2R, L2C, S2P, H2R etc.
- Vendor & Financial Management
- Manage offshore vendors and third-party AMS partners to deliver high-quality support;
- Conduct service reviews to audit partner metrics against contractual obligations;
- Optimize operational budgets while identifying license or capacity cost-saving opportunities & improve ROI for the organization.
- Program/Projects
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, business stakeholders, the Enterprise Architects, and Program/Project Managers to define requirements, prioritize initiatives, and ensure the successful integration of SAP solutions;
- Oversee the planning, execution, and delivery of SAP initiatives;
- Monitor project risks and issues, implementing mitigation strategies to ensure project success;
- Establish strong governance to ensure standard best in class solution deployment.
You Bring This Value
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Management, Engineering, or other related discipline;
- Significant experience (15+ years) in a high-transaction, services-oriented, global business with strong leadership experience in applications management within a large, complex, fast-paced and dynamic company with an emphasis on global SAP implementations;
- Expertise in SAP systems both on-premises and cloud applications (public and private) and technical architecture, including SAP solutions customizations/development and integration with different other systems;
- Expertise in SAP solutions for one or more of the end to end processes Record to Report, Lead to Cash, Source to Pay and Hire to Retire;
- Strong leadership and team-building skills, with the ability to motivate and develop high-performing global SAP Operational teams;
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills and ability to work with both internal business and external digital technology partners;
- Strategic thinker with the ability to align SAP capabilities with business objectives;
- Strong understanding of enterprise architecture, IT governance, and business process optimization;
- Knowledge of industry best practices, regulatory requirements, and SAP innovations;
- Ability to travel approximately 35 percent, domestically and internationally.
Competencies
To be successful in this role you must recognize yourself in the following profile:
Focusing on driving innovation and continuous improvement by adopting new SAP technologies, including S/4HANA, SAP BTP, SuccessFactors, and SAP CX, to enhance business processes and user experience. It emphasizes staying ahead of SAP developments and industry trends to identify opportunities for innovation and value creation in SAP implementation and outsourcing services. You involve leading the adoption of best practices in SAP solution design, development, and deployment across emerging areas such as sustainability reporting, tax compliance, and security. Additionally, it requires building and developing a high-performing SAP team while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, continuous learning, and knowledge sharing. Candidates will be assessed on the following LYB competencies:
- Build Partnerships
- Deliver Results
- Drive Innovation
- Grow Capabilities
- Promote Inclusion
What We Offer
We offer an environment where we encourage personal and professional growth and where you will be rewarded for your performance and results. You will have the possibility to work with specialist on all fields to develop innovative solutions and to extend your national and international network. In addition, we offer you a competitive salary package. The Company's Global Remote Work Policy allows eligible employees the option to work up to two days a week from home. LyondellBasell is committed to advancing diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) to ensure a positive experience for all employees.
Interested?
Please send us your resume via the application button.
Please feel free to contact James Smeets, Talent Acquisition Consultant at james.smeets @ lyondellbasell.com for more details. Would you like to apply? Just send us your motivation and resume via the application button. Only applications through this application button will be taken into consideration. #LI-Hybrid #LI-JS2
The recruitment process consists of an initial phone screening and business interviews before proceeding to a possible job offer. A background check will be part of the process as well.
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