Director, SAP Technology Lead - Finance

Category/Area of Expertise: IT & Technology
Job Requisition: 486652
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 -- Finance serves as the senior authority for SAP S/4HANA Finance solutions and plays a pivotal 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 comprehensive finance capabilities, including General Ledger, Financial Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cost Center Accounting and Controlling, Fixed Assets, Treasury and Cash Management, Profitability Analysis, Management Accounting, and Project Systems. A critical aspect of this role is orchestrating the migration of ADUSA's existing on-premise SAP S/4HANA Finance platform to SAP RISE, achieving clean core principles and consolidating finance processes in legacy systems into SAP.
The Director ensures seamless integration across finance, merchandising, supply chain, store operations, and digital commerce platforms to enable real-time financial visibility, accurate cost accounting, efficient cash management, and enterprise-wide profitability transparency. During the retail spine transformation, this leader is accountable for consolidating all finance-related functions from remaining legacy systems into SAP S/4HANA Finance, ensuring centralized, standardized, and streamlined end-to-end finance processes that support accurate financial close, regulatory compliance, and data-driven business insights.
This leader shapes enterprise finance technology standards, drives cross-workstream alignment, and ensures disciplined execution across all phases of the transformation lifecycle. In close partnership with Finance business leadership and IT teams, the Director mobilizes System Integrator partners to deliver fit-to-standard, clean-core aligned solutions that support ADUSA's long-term agility, innovation, and SAP RISE cloud operating model.
With an AI- and analytics-first mindset, the Director enables automated financial workflows, intelligent financial planning and analysis, predictive cash flow management, and real-time profitability insights across the enterprise. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in SAP S/4HANA Finance capabilities, RISE migration experience, strong executive leadership skills, and a proven track record delivering large-scale ERP transformations in complex, high-volume retail environments.
Our flexible/ hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days at one of our core locations and 2 remote days. Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
Duties & Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership & Transformation Execution

• Provide strategic leadership and ownership of SAP S/4HANA Finance delivery on RISE, including orchestrating the migration from on-premise to RISE cloud environment, upgrading to the latest S/4HANA version, and achieving clean core principles throughout the transformation journey.
• Serve as the technology authority for SAP Finance capabilities across all modules including GL, FI, AP, AR, CO, Fixed Assets, Treasury, Profitability Analysis, Management Accounting, and Project Systems, ensuring alignment with Clean Core principles, SAP Best Practices, and cloud operating standards.
• Lead the consolidation of all finance-related functions from legacy systems into SAP S/4HANA Finance during the retail spine transformation, ensuring centralized, standardized end-to-end finance processes that eliminate redundancy, reduce technical debt, and enable scalable growth.
• Partner closely with Finance leadership to translate financial strategy and operational requirements into scalable SAP functional and technical designs, enabling accurate financial reporting, efficient period-end close, regulatory compliance, real-time profitability visibility, and data-driven decision-making.
• Lead solution architecture and cross-functional integration across finance, merchandising, supply chain, store operations, and digital commerce systems, ensuring cohesive system-of-record ownership, end-to-end process integrity, and seamless data flow across the enterprise.
• Define and deliver integrations between SAP Finance and best-of-breed planning, analytics, reporting, and digital platforms to support financial planning and analysis (FP&A), budgeting, forecasting, cash management, and profitability optimization.
• Deliver intelligent automation through AI and strategic analytics solutions to optimize finance processes including automated invoice processing, predictive cash flow management, intelligent expense categorization, anomaly detection, and real-time financial insights.
• Design and deliver the finance data foundation to support operational, analytical, and regulatory reporting needs, including financial data models, data governance frameworks, and integration with enterprise data platforms to enable advanced analytics and business intelligence.

System Integrator & Platform Alignment

• Own delivery outcomes across the System Integrator and SAP RISE ecosystem, holding all partners accountable for scope execution, solution quality, migration success, upgrade delivery, and business results throughout the on-premise to RISE transformation.
• Establish and enforce design governance, architecture standards, and release controls, ensuring solutions align with Clean Core principles, RISE service boundaries, SAP BTP extensibility guidelines, and enterprise cloud operating models.
• Lead technical assessments of custom code, legacy interfaces, and technical debt within existing on-premise SAP Finance landscape, developing comprehensive remediation plans to achieve clean core state before and during RISE migration.
• Drive fit-to-standard principles throughout the transformation, challenging non-standard requirements, eliminating unnecessary customizations, and ensuring maximum adoption of SAP standard functionality and best practices.
• Oversee the design and execution of data migration strategies from legacy systems and on-premise SAP to RISE, ensuring data quality, integrity, completeness, and compliance throughout the migration process.

Team Leadership & Talent Development

• 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.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure all finance solutions meet regulatory requirements including SOX compliance, GAAP/IFRS standards, audit trail requirements, segregation of duties, and internal control frameworks.
• Establish and maintain comprehensive security controls, access governance, and authorization models across all SAP Finance modules to ensure data protection, privacy compliance, and risk mitigation.
• Lead disaster recovery planning, business continuity strategies, and operational resilience initiatives for the SAP Finance platform, ensuring minimal disruption during RISE migration and ongoing operations.

Change Management & Communication

• 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.

Post-Implementation Support & Continous Improvement

• Define and track functional success metrics (e.g., system adoption and operational continuity).
• Lead cutover planning, stabilization governance, and lessons-learned cycles following deployment.
• Establish support models, service level agreements, and operational runbooks for SAP Finance on RISE, ensuring efficient incident resolution, proactive monitoring, and continuous platform optimization.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Directly manages and develops SAP Finance technical leads, architects, developers, and analysts across multiple finance modules and workstreams.
• Provides functional oversight and technical direction to System Integrator delivery teams, offshore resources, and contractor staff working on SAP Finance initiatives.
• Collaborates with peer technology leaders across merchandising, supply chain, store operations, and digital commerce to ensure cohesive enterprise transformation delivery.
• Partners with Finance business leaders, process owners, and key stakeholders to align technology delivery with business strategy and operational requirements.

Additional job duties may be assigned as needed to meet the needs of the business and support our Values.
Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, Finance, or related field required; MBA, Master's degree, preferred.
• 10+ years of SAP Finance experience, including leadership of large-scale SAP S/4HANA transformations within retail, grocery, or consumer-facing organizations.
• Deep expertise and hands-on experience in SAP S/4HANA Finance modules including GL, AP, AR, Asset Accounting, Controlling, Margin Analysis (CO-PA), and integration with inventory and merchandising processes.
• Proven track record leading full-lifecycle SAP implementations, including fit-to-standard design, clean-core adoption, build governance, testing oversight, cutover, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Experience leading SAP RISE cloud transformations, including finance data migration, environment modernization, and cloud operating model alignment.
• Strong understanding of retail finance processes, including inventory valuation, cost of goods sold, vendor funding, rebates, store accounting, and enterprise profitability reporting.
• Demonstrated experience integrating SAP Finance with retail and enterprise platforms such as merchandising, supply chain, POS, FP&A, treasury, and enterprise analytics solutions.
• Proven ability to standardize and modernize finance processes, retire legacy systems, and enable scalable financial operations across multi-brand, multi-channel environments.
• Experience leading global system integrators and cross-functional teams across Finance, Merchandising, Supply Chain, and IT in complex ERP programs.
• Executive presence with the ability to influence CFO organizations and senior technology leaders, drive organizational change, and ensure alignment between finance strategy and technology delivery.
• Strong knowledge of financial controls, audit, and regulatory requirements including SOX compliance, GAAP/IFRS reporting, and internal control frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead high-performing teams and deliver measurable business outcomes in fast-paced, high-transaction retail environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.
• Demonstrated success driving Fit-to-Standard and reducing technical debt/custom code.
• SAP certifications in S/4HANA Finance.

Compensation & Benefits• Competitive compensation and benefits package.• Located at the ADUSA regional headquarters which are located just outside Charlotte, North Carolina (Salisbury).
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.
#li-mm1 #li-hybrid
At Ahold Delhaize USA, we provide services to one of the largest portfolios of grocery companies in the nation, and we're actively seeking top talent.
Our team shares a common motivation to drive change, take ownership and enable our brands to better care for their customers. We thrive on supporting great local grocery brands and their strategies.
Our associates are the heartbeat of our organization. We are committed to offering a welcoming work environment where all associates can succeed and thrive. Guided by our values of courage, care, teamwork, integrity (and even a little humor), we are dedicated to being a great place to work.
We believe in collaboration, curiosity, and continuous learning in all that we think, create and do. While building a culture where personal and professional growth are just as important as business growth, we invest in our people, empowering them to learn, grow and deliver at all levels of the business.