REGIONAL PROGRAM MANAGER - SAP S/4HANA

About the role

The Senior Program/Project Manager – SAP S/4HANA Upgrade (North America) is responsible for leading the North American workstream of a global SAP ECC-to-SAP S/4HANA transformation, with a planned go-live in 2028. While the overall program is led by the global IT organization, this role owns planning and execution for the North American region, including implementation activities, local add-ons and integrations, user acceptance testing (UAT), training programs, change management, communications, and stakeholder alignment across all North American businesses and functions.

Responsibilities

• Act as the primary North American program/project lead within the global SAP S/4HANA program governance structure.
• Develop and maintain the regional project plan (scope, timelines, milestones, dependencies, resources, budget) aligned with global standards and methodologies (e.g., SAP Activate / PMO framework).
• Ensure consistency with global design principles while representing North American regulatory, legal, tax, and business requirements.
• Cook up with global IT, regional IT, business process owners, and external partners/consultants.
• Provide regular status reporting, risk/issue escalation, and decision-ready recommendations to regional leadership and the global program steering committee.
• Lead all North American implementation activities across requirements, solution design, build, testing, data migration, cutover planning, and post-go-live hypercare.
• Manage local add-on developments, interfaces, and integrations required to support regional business processes and legacy systems.
• Cook up and oversee User Acceptance Testing (UAT) across all impacted business units, including test planning, test case definition, execution, defect management, and sign-off.
• Define target user groups and role-based training needs in collaboration with business process owners and functional leads.
• Oversee development of training content (classroom, virtual, e-learning, job aids) and ensure timely, high-quality training delivery to end users and key stakeholders.
• Serve as a visible change champion, ensuring consistent messaging and engagement from leadership across the region.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders across all North American business units, functions, and sites.
• Proactively identify, assess, and manage program and project risks, issues, and dependencies; drive mitigation and contingency plans and ensure clear ownership.
• Ensure adherence to global program standards, architecture principles, security and compliance requirements, and internal controls.
• Monitor quality of deliverables from all internal and external teams; ensure that testing and validation processes meet agreed criteria before moving to subsequent phases.
• Lead the regional hypercare phase after go-live, coordinating incident resolution, enhancement requests, and user support.
• Capture lessons learned and improvement opportunities from North America and feed them back into global continuous improvement initiatives.
• Support the transition from project mode to "business-as-usual" operations in collaboration with global IT, Shared Services, and business process owners.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering, or related field (Master’s degree preferred)
• 10–15+ years of overall IT project/program management experience, with a significant portion in ERP/SAP initiatives
• Minimum 3–5 full life-cycle SAP implementations, including at least one large SAP S/4HANA program or ECC-to-S/4HANA conversion in a global or multi-region context
• Proven experience managing large, cross-functional teams (IT, business, external partners) in a matrixed, international environment
• Demonstrated success leading complex change and user adoption (training programs, communication strategies, stakeholder engagement).
• Strong understanding of core SAP processes (e.g., Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, Record-to-Report, Manufacturing/Logistics) and how they are impacted by S/4HANA

Skills

• Professional certifications such as PMP, Prince2, or Scrum/Agile; SAP S/4HANA or SAP project management certifications are a plus.

Benefits

Yokogawa is committed to the United Nations sustainable development goals by utilizing our ability to measure and connect. We offer great career opportunities to grow yourself in a truly global culture where respect, value creation, collaboration, integrity, and gratitude are highly valued and exhibited in everything we do.

Pay

Competitive compensation package, including base salary, performance bonuses, and benefits.

Schedule

Full-time position with flexible working hours to accommodate global team dynamics.