This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a SAP Cutover Lead based in Canada.
This role leads the end-to-end cutover strategy and execution for a large-scale SAP implementation, migration, or transformation program.
You will coordinate complex technical, functional, data, infrastructure, and business activities to ensure a controlled and successful go-live.
Working across globally distributed teams, you will establish integrated plans, manage dependencies, and drive readiness from rehearsal through production deployment.
The role is particularly focused on Healthcare and Life Sciences environments, where data integrity, validation, compliance, and business continuity are critical.
You will lead command-center activities, facilitate go/no-go decisions, manage risks and issues, and coordinate real-time communication during high-pressure deployment periods.
Beyond go-live, you will oversee the transition into hypercare, stabilization, and steady-state operations.
This is an opportunity to provide senior leadership on a highly visible transformation while minimizing disruption to critical enterprise operations.
Accountabilities
You will own the integrated cutover lifecycle, bringing together SAP workstreams, business teams, technical functions, data migration teams, and external stakeholders to ensure every critical activity is planned, validated, and executed effectively.
- Own and drive the end-to-end SAP cutover strategy, planning, execution, governance, and stabilization.
- Develop and maintain comprehensive Cutover Plans, integrated runbooks, checklists, dependency maps, and readiness dashboards.
- Define cutover phases, milestones, sequencing, dependencies, entry and exit criteria, checkpoints, and go/no-go decision points.
- Coordinate cutover planning across SAP workstreams, business functions, geographies, sites, and connected third-party systems.
- Lead cutover planning workshops and establish governance, escalation, communication, and decision-making processes.
- Lead mock cutovers, dress rehearsals, production cutovers, go-live, and stabilization activities.
- Manage the cutover command center or war room during critical deployment periods.
- Track execution against the approved runbook and proactively manage delays, dependencies, risks, and issues.
- Facilitate readiness reviews and go/no-go decisions with program leadership and key stakeholders.
- Ensure contingency, rollback, and recovery plans are established, documented, and understood.
- Coordinate SAP technical and functional activities involving configuration, transports, interfaces, batch jobs, security, roles, integrations, system shutdowns, production startup, and validation.
- Partner with SAP Basis, functional, development, integration, security, infrastructure, and application teams.
- Coordinate data migration activities including extraction, cleansing, transformation, loading, reconciliation, validation, and business sign-off.
- Ensure data migration dependencies are integrated into the master cutover plan and that data integrity and traceability controls are maintained.
- Coordinate business readiness, including system downtime, transaction freezes, blackout periods, post-go-live procedures, and critical business-process validation.
- Partner with Change Management, Training, Communications, and Business Process teams to align organizational readiness with technical deployment.
- Ensure cutover activities comply with applicable Healthcare and Life Sciences quality, regulatory, validation, and data-integrity requirements.
- Collaborate with Quality, Regulatory, and Computer System Validation teams on documentation, approvals, traceability, and evidence collection.
- Manage cutover-specific risks, issues, assumptions, dependencies, and critical-path conflicts, escalating significant concerns with clear impact assessments and recommended actions.
- Coordinate the transition from cutover into production support and hypercare, establishing ownership and prioritization for post-go-live issues.
- Define hypercare exit criteria and support transition into steady-state operations.
- Lead post-cutover lessons learned and document recommendations for subsequent deployment waves.
Requirements:
You should bring extensive SAP transformation experience, strong cutover leadership capabilities, and a proven track record of managing complex enterprise go-lives in regulated environments. The role requires a confident stakeholder manager who can coordinate diverse teams, make informed decisions under pressure, and maintain strong operational discipline throughout critical deployment periods.
- 10 years of overall SAP/ERP transformation experience, with significant experience leading complex SAP cutovers.
- 7 years of proven experience as an SAP Cutover Lead, Cutover Manager, Deployment Lead, or equivalent on large-scale SAP programs.
- 5 years of strong experience working with SAP S/4HANA and/or SAP ECC environments.
- 3–5 years of experience leading one or more full-lifecycle SAP go-lives.
- Required experience within the Healthcare or Life Sciences industry.
- Experience supporting programs in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, diagnostics, healthcare, clinical/laboratory, or Life Sciences manufacturing and distribution environments.
- Strong knowledge of SAP implementation and deployment methodologies.
- Hands-on experience developing detailed cutover plans, runbooks, checklists, dependency maps, and readiness dashboards.
- Strong understanding of SAP data migration, integrations, transports, infrastructure, testing, security, and production deployment dependencies.
- Proven experience managing mock cutovers, dress rehearsals, production deployments, command centers, hypercare, and stabilization.
- Broad understanding of SAP business processes and cross-functional dependencies across FI/CO, MM, SD, PP, EWM, QM, PM, supply chain, master data, and integrations.
- Ability to understand enterprise-wide SAP dependencies without requiring deep configuration expertise in every module.
- Experience with regulated systems, GxP environments, Computer System Validation, data integrity, quality processes, and regulatory compliance strongly preferred.
- Familiarity with FDA, GMP, CSV, GxP, or comparable regulatory frameworks highly desirable.
- Experience working with globally distributed business and technical teams.
- Strong risk, issue, dependency, and critical-path management capabilities.
- Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
- Ability to operate calmly and effectively in high-pressure environments during critical go-live periods.
- Experience with tools such as SAP Activate, SAP Solution Manager, Cloud ALM, Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Excel, and RAID management is preferred.
- Familiarity with Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid delivery methodologies.
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related discipline preferred.
- SAP certification is preferred but not mandatory.
- PMP, PRINCE2, or an equivalent project/program management certification is advantageous.
- Experience with global or multi-site SAP deployments and S/4HANA transformation or migration programs is highly desirable.
Benefits:
- Compensation of $60–$70 CAD per hour.
- Fully remote position in Canada.
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
- Discount Perks program.
- Opportunity to lead a large-scale SAP transformation within a regulated Healthcare/Life Sciences environment.
- High-impact role spanning technical deployment, business readiness, data migration, compliance, go-live, and hypercare.
- Collaboration with globally distributed SAP, business, technical, and program teams.
How Jobgether works:
We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team.
We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!
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