Domain Solution Architect — SAP on Azure

Location: Perth, Australia

Contract: 12 months

Work Arrangement: Remote

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced SAP on Azure Enterprise Architect to act as the design authority for an established SAP estate running on Microsoft Azure.

This is not a migration role. The SAP platform is already live, and the focus is on understanding the existing environment, establishing the target-state architecture, governing change, optimising the platform, and driving the roadmap for modernisation.

The initial focus will be on current-state assessment and reverse engineering — identifying what is actually running, validating existing documentation, assessing architecture and operational risks, and identifying opportunities for cost and performance optimisation.

You will then own the forward architecture roadmap and act as a senior escalation point for delivery squads, SAP Basis teams, infrastructure teams and managed service partners.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the current-state and target-state architecture for the SAP landscape on Azure, including interfaces with the wider enterprise estate.
• Assess the existing SAP on Azure environment and identify gaps between documented and actual architecture.
• Establish architecture standards and govern infrastructure, integration and release changes against the target state.
• Review and approve significant technical changes and take appropriate items through Design Authority and Architecture Review Board (ARB) processes.
• Own the SAP platform architecture and modernisation roadmap, including:
• S/4HANA conversion planning
• SAP release and HANA revision strategy
• Operating system lifecycle
• Azure platform and service modernisation
• Review and uplift HA/DR architecture, including HANA System Replication and ASCS/ERS clustering.
• Plan, execute and evidence DR testing against agreed RTO/RPO objectives and drive remediation of identified gaps.
• Lead Azure cost optimisation for SAP workloads, including:
• SAPS-based right-sizing
• Reserved Instance and Savings Plan optimisation
• Azure Hybrid Benefit
• Storage tiering and optimisation
• Own the evolving integration architecture across SAP BTP, Integration Suite, Entra ID and enterprise analytics platforms.
• Improve platform observability and operational maturity using Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions, alerting, capacity planning and structured maintenance processes.
• Identify and remediate security, resilience and compliance issues affecting the SAP platform.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance to SAP Basis, infrastructure, DevOps and managed service partners.
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex SAP/Azure architecture and operational issues.
• Communicate architecture decisions, risks and recommendations effectively to senior stakeholders and CIO-level audiences.

Essential Experience

• 8+ years' experience in enterprise, solution or technical architecture.
• 4+ years of hands-on architectural accountability for production SAP workloads running on Azure.
• Proven experience owning and improving an existing SAP on Azure estate, rather than only designing or delivering migrations.
• Strong SAP technical architecture knowledge across:
• SAP S/4HANA and/or ECC
• HANA Database
• SAP NetWeaver
• ASCS/ERS
• BW/4HANA
• Strong Azure infrastructure knowledge relevant to SAP workloads, including:
• Azure M-series
• Azure NetApp Files
• Premium SSD v2 / Ultra Disk
• Availability Zones
• Proximity Placement Groups
• ExpressRoute
• Demonstrated ability to enter an undocumented or poorly documented environment, reverse-engineer the current state and produce an accurate architecture baseline without disrupting production.
• Strong experience reviewing and testing SAP HA/DR architectures, including:
• HANA System Replication
• Pacemaker
• SLES/RHEL clustering and/or Windows clustering
• Practical experience optimising Azure costs for SAP workloads, including right-sizing, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and Azure Hybrid Benefit.
• Strong architecture governance experience, including Design Authority, ARB, technical standards and change governance.
• Excellent documentation and communication skills, with the ability to defend architectural decisions to senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Comfortable working across SAP Basis, infrastructure, cloud engineering, managed service providers and enterprise architecture teams.

Desirable Experience

• AZ-120 – Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads.
• AZ-305 or equivalent Azure architecture certification.
• SAP-certified architecture credentials.
• TOGAF or equivalent enterprise architecture framework experience.
• Experience with ECC to S/4HANA conversion planning.
• Experience with RISE with SAP and the shared-responsibility model.
• Experience with:
• SAP BTP
• SAP Integration Suite
• SAP Datasphere
• SAP-to-Fabric/Synapse integration patterns
• Experience with Terraform or Bicep.
• Experience with Azure Center for SAP Solutions.
• Experience with SAP LaMa.

Key Success Measures

Success in this role will be demonstrated through:

• A validated and accurate current-state SAP/Azure architecture.
• A clear and governed target-state architecture and roadmap.
• Improved SAP platform resilience and demonstrated DR readiness.
• Measurable Azure cost optimisation.
• Improved monitoring, operational maturity and capacity planning.
• Effective governance of architectural and infrastructure changes.
• Reduction of security, compliance and technical debt risks.
• Strong alignment between SAP, Azure, infrastructure, integration and enterprise architecture teams.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate will be a senior SAP on Azure architect/design authority who combines deep SAP technical knowledge with strong Azure infrastructure expertise, enterprise architecture governance and production-platform optimisation experience.

• This role is best suited to someone who can walk into an established SAP environment, understand what is actually running, identify risks and inefficiencies, establish the target architecture and lead the organisation through the next stage of modernisation.