Associate Director, Enterprise Software Engineering Italy

This role is based in Milan, Italy. Using your deep technical expertise and strong leadership capabilities, you will lead the Italy Enterprise Systems team and drive a multi‑year transformation of a complex SAP‑centric landscape. You will modernise enterprise applications, reduce technical debt, and enable migration from SAP ECC 6.8 to a centralized S/4HANA platform.

• Provide thought leadership in close collaboration with Italian and global Business Process Owners to simplify and improve core business processes across Finance, Order‑to‑Cash, CRM, and HR.
• Lead and manage the Italy Enterprise Systems team responsible for SAP ECC, SAP C4C, and remaining legacy platforms such as Lotus Domino.
• Own the transformation of the current Italy Enterprise Systems landscape, characterised by significant technical debt and business complexity.
• Execute a roadmap to simplify and rationalise the ES landscape ahead of the migration to S/4HANA.
• Lead the preparation for SAP ECC 6.8 end‑of‑life, including system simplification, custom‑code reduction, and process harmonisation.
• Drive the definition and adoption of business‑process templates aligned with the global STEP S/4HANA model.
• Direct and govern fit‑to‑standard and fit‑gap analyses to enable the rollout of S/4HANA in Italy.
• Support and co‑lead the migration of Italy to S/4HANA, ensuring business continuity and operational stability.
• Drive the successful delivery of operational releases and transformation initiatives within agreed scope, timeline, budget and risk parameters.
• Identify and resolve complex technical, operational and organisational challenges across systems and stakeholders.
• Manage internal and external resources, optimising capacity, cost and capability across run and change activities.
• Proactively address workforce risks, including succession planning in light of anticipated retirements within the coming five years.

• Proven track record as a thought leader working with enterprise systems in a large, complex, global organisation.
• Minimum 5 years of experience managing and leading enterprise application or software delivery teams.
• Extensive experience with SAP enterprise landscapes, including ECC and S/4HANA transformation programmes.
• Experience working with Finance, Supply Chain, Sales and HR systems and processes (e.g. FICO, O2C, CRM, HR).
• Strong background in Enterprise Architecture, Systems Requirements, Project and Programme Management, Systems Design and Delivery.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring, coaching and developing team members, including performance management and succession planning.
• Ability to analyse complex business needs, facilitate structured discussions and drive process standardisation and efficiency.
• Experience working with geographically diverse teams and external vendor partners.
• Demonstrated budget management, tracking and forecasting experience.
• Proven ability to deliver enterprise system initiatives on time and within budget.
• Experience defining, maintaining and improving processes, metrics, SLAs and governance models across enterprise platforms.