Director – SAP Delivery and Support Services
Sandisk
Sandisk meets people and businesses at the intersection of their aspirations and the moment, enabling them to keep moving and pushing possibility forward. We do this through the balance of our powerhouse manufacturing capabilities and our industry-leading portfolio of products that are recognized globally for innovation, performance and quality.
Sandisk has two facilities recognized by the World Economic Forum as part of the Global Lighthouse Network for advanced 4IR innovations. These facilities were also recognized as Sustainability Lighthouses for breakthroughs in efficient operations. With our global reach, we ensure the global supply chain has access to the Flash memory it needs to keep our world moving forward.
Description
Sandisk is seeking a Director – SAP Delivery and Support Services, based in India, to build and lead our offshore SAP delivery factory and to own application support for the global SAP estate. Reporting to the Senior Director – ERP, this leader will stand up a scalable configuration and development capability in India, direct vendor-delivered Application Managed Services (AMS) teams, and establish the service levels, governance, and engineering standards that keep SAP stable while major transformation programs are underway. This is a build role: the successful candidate will create the capability, not inherit it.
Essential Job Duties And Responsibilities
Leadership & Strategic Management
- Lead and grow the India-based SAP delivery and support organization, combining Sandisk employees, contract resources, and vendor-managed service partners into a single accountable operating unit.
- Define and own the offshore delivery strategy, including the target operating model, capability build sequence, location strategy, and the balance between retained core roles and flexible vendor capacity.
- Serve as the senior Sandisk IT leader on the ground in India for Enterprise Systems, representing the function to local stakeholders, vendor executives, and site leadership.
- Partner closely with the Senior Director – ERP and the value-stream Directors (Order-to-Cash, Source-to-Pay, Plan-to-Fulfill, Record-to-Report, Technical Services) to align offshore capacity with global priorities incl. the Malaysia factory.
- Design, establish, and scale an offshore SAP configuration and development factory delivering functional configuration, custom development, enhancements, integrations, data work, and testing across the SAP landscape.
- Define the factory operating model end to end: demand intake, estimation, work allocation, sprint and release cadence, peer review, quality gates, and acceptance criteria.
- Build a predictable capacity model that flexes with project demand, with transparent unit costs and a clear view of available and committed effort by skill.
- Establish engineering standards and reusable assets – development guidelines, reference architectures, accelerators, templates, and code and configuration repositories – to reduce rebuild effort across similar work.
- Convert recurring, bespoke requests into repeatable, catalogued services with defined service levels and published turnaround times.
- Embed AI-assisted development and testing tooling to accelerate delivery throughput, with defined guardrails for data use, human review, and quality assurance.
- Own the end-to-end performance of vendor-delivered AMS teams supporting the global SAP estate, including incident, problem, change, and service request management.
- Direct day-to-day production support across SAP functional and technical areas, ensuring incidents are resolved within agreed priority and response targets and that root cause is addressed, not just symptoms.
- Establish follow-the-sun and overlapping core-hours coverage models that provide responsive support to manufacturing, factory, and commercial operations across US, Malaysia, and India time zones.
- Own the support escalation path, acting as the primary point of escalation for high-severity incidents and major-incident management, including executive communication during outages.
- Drive down recurring ticket volume through problem management, permanent fixes, automation of repetitive tasks, and targeted user enablement.
- Maintain and continuously improve support documentation, runbooks, knowledge articles, and the standing knowledge transfer process between project teams and support teams.
- Manage the performance of SAP AMS and delivery vendors, including statements of work, deliverable acceptance, service credits, and remediation of underperformance.
- Negotiate and govern vendor commercial constructs, moving the portfolio toward outcome and ticket-based pricing where it improves predictability and value.
- Establish formal vendor governance: operational reviews, monthly service reviews, quarterly business reviews, and a clear escalation ladder with named accountabilities on both sides.
- Drive continuous cost efficiency across the vendor base through productivity commitments, automation credits, pyramid optimisation, and rate benchmarking.
- Ensure vendor teams meet Sandisk standards for security, access control, data handling, background screening, and compliance with corporate policy.
- Define, publish, and report Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and operational metrics for both delivery and support, including cycle time, first-time-right rate, defect escape rate, and service availability.
- Operate a disciplined release and change management process, ensuring all transports and changes move through controlled, auditable promotion paths.
- Partner with the SOX and Compliance function to maintain IT general controls, segregation of duties, and audit evidence across development and support activity.
- Own quality assurance for offshore-delivered work, with defined review gates so that work handed back to onshore teams is complete, tested, and documented.
- Run a structured continuous improvement program with measurable annual targets for productivity, quality, and cost per unit of delivery.
- Build the India talent pipeline for SAP skills that are difficult and expensive to source onshore, including SAP S/4HANA functional configuration, ABAP and extension development, integration, and Basis and security.
- Hire, develop, and retain a deep technical bench, with succession cover for critical roles and deliberate removal of single points of dependency.
- Establish a structured capability development program – certification paths, cross-training across value streams, and rotation between project delivery and support work.
- Create a compelling engineering culture and employee value proposition that competes effectively for SAP talent in the Indian market and keeps attrition within target.
- Protect institutional knowledge through documented handover, shadowing, and knowledge retention practices, particularly during vendor transitions.
- Act as the trusted delivery partner to onshore value-stream Directors, IT business relationship managers, and solution architects, converting approved demand into delivered outcomes.
- Provide transparent, regular reporting on delivery status, support performance, capacity, risk, and vendor health to Enterprise Systems leadership.
- Work with factory and plant operations stakeholders to ensure support coverage genuinely meets the needs of twenty-four-hour manufacturing operations.
- Communicate clearly and credibly with both technical teams and non-technical business stakeholders across multiple geographies and time zones.
- Own the budget for offshore delivery capacity, AMS vendor contracts, support operations, and India-based headcount, in the $5–$10 million range.
- Optimise the mix of employees, contractors, and vendor-managed services to balance cost, capability retention, and flexibility.
- Provide accurate forecasting and cost transparency so the cost of scaling delivery capacity is visible before it is committed.
- Identify and deliver year-on-year cost reduction through offshore leverage, automation, and the retirement of redundant support scope.
- Provide scalable offshore delivery capacity to major SAP transformation programs, including SAP S/4HANA implementation, phased rollouts, and post go-live stabilisation.
- Stand up the hypercare and transition-to-support model for go-live events, including the criteria and gates for moving scope from project teams into steady-state support.
- Sequence the build-out of offshore capability so that it strengthens, rather than disrupts, concurrent enterprise transformation programs.
- Support the retirement of legacy platforms by absorbing and then decommissioning the associated support scope on a committed schedule.
Direct Reports
- Hires, retains, trains, coaches, guides, directs, and develops direct reports (e.g., Senior Managers, Managers, Delivery Leads, Technical Leads) using company-wide processes, tools, and resources.
- Oversees large third-party vendor delivery and support teams, offshore contract resources, and matrixed project teams, providing direction, performance management, and escalation governance.
- Travel up to 25% (Domestic and International), including periodic travel to Sandisk sites in the United States and Malaysia.
Education Level
- Master’s degree, Bachelor’s degree, or equivalent senior-level experience in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related field.
- 14+ years of progressive IT delivery and support leadership experience, with at least 10+ years in SAP delivery, application managed services, or global capability centre leadership.
- Atleast 1-2 years of SAP S/4 HANA on RISE & SAP Ariba experience
- Demonstrated experience building or materially scaling an offshore SAP delivery or support organisation, including the operating model, governance, and talent strategy – not solely running an established one.
- Deep working knowledge of the SAP landscape across functional configuration, ABAP and extension development, integration, and Basis and security, with the credibility to govern technical decisions.
Sandisk thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution.
Sandisk is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at [email protected] to advise us of your accommodation request. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.