Principal Solution Architect

Lumen connects the world. We are igniting business growth by connecting people, data and applications quickly, securely and effortlessly. Our ERP estate is where much of that work is bought, built, paid for and reported, and the Principal IT ERP Solution & Portfolio Management role leads solution and portfolio management for it from the IT side.

This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who enjoys bringing order to complexity. Our landscape is organized around value streams such as Procure-to-Pay, Material-to-Deploy, Record-to-Report and Capital Programs and Portfolio Management, and around the IT workstreams that serve them, including development, data, reporting, security, testing and cutover. It runs on SAP S/4HANA at the core, alongside surrounding platforms such as the Procurement Gateway, satellite and field systems, and an expanding set of third-party and outsourced service providers brought in by Procurement and the business. You will hold a single connected view across all of it: what is in flight, what it depends on, what it will cost, and what happens if it moves.

The initial focus for this role is the supply chain and spend portfolio, spanning Procure-to-Pay and Accounts Payable, Supply Chain and Sourcing, Material-to-Deploy, Project Systems, capital programs and construction flow, together with the points where these transactions land in Record-to-Report. Scope is expected to broaden as the estate moves from transformation into steady state and as new platforms join the landscape.

You will run intake, prepare the impact assessments that give leaders a clear basis for a decision, keep the roadmap and dependency view current, and help protect the health of the landscape by encouraging standard solutions and steady reduction of complexity. This role earns its influence through trust, transparency and credibility rather than reporting lines. It reports to the Vice President, IT Billing & ERP and has no direct reports.

• Maintain a strategic view of the ERP portfolio, including priorities, dependencies, costs, risks, and cross-functional impacts.
• Manage portfolio demand intake and partner with business and IT stakeholders to validate requirements, value, and funding justification.
• Assess business, technical, operational, and organizational impacts of major changes to support informed decision-making.
• Oversee change request management, ensuring scope, effort, status, and release sequencing are aligned across dependent workstreams.
• Lead portfolio planning activities, translating enterprise priorities into executable, milestone-driven roadmaps.
• Maintain visibility into the end-to-end ERP ecosystem, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, SAP Business Network, and integrated platforms.
• Partner with architects, engineering leaders, and business stakeholders to evaluate solution options and recommend scalable, cost-effective approaches.Promote standard, configuration-first solutions while managing technical debt, deferred work, and long-term platform sustainability.
• Support data governance and master data quality across key business domains through collaboration with business data owners.
• Identify portfolio risks, opportunities, capacity constraints, and alignment concerns, escalating issues proactively.
• Develop and maintain dashboards, metrics, and reporting to communicate portfolio performance, progress, risks, and outcomes.
• Support stabilization and hypercare efforts through root-cause analysis, corrective action tracking, and transition-to-operations planning.
• Serve as a trusted liaison across Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain, IT, Audit, and Transformation Office stakeholders.
• Manage relationships with systems integrators, platform vendors, and service providers to ensure delivery quality and roadmap alignment.
• Mentor analysts and delivery team members, fostering knowledge sharing, continuous improvement, and portfolio management best practices.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in portfolio management, solution management, program management, or a similar role supporting enterprise ERP and connected business systems in an IT organization.
• Working knowledge of the value chain in an enterprise ERP: requisition to purchase order to receipt, invoice processing and exception handling, three-way match, payment, and how these transactions flow through to the general ledger.
• Familiarity with SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, and invoice management platforms such as OpenText VIM, along with exposure to Project Systems, capital programs, and materials management, and experience integrating an ERP core with surrounding and third-party systems.
• Demonstrated experience running intake and impact assessment processes, including business case, capacity and dependency analysis.
• Experience working across IT delivery disciplines such as development, data, reporting, testing, security and cutover, and supporting change and release processes in a SOX-relevant environment, including an understanding of control and segregation-of-duties considerations.
• Strong analytical skills and financial acumen, with the ability to interpret complex data and turn it into actionable insight for a leadership audience.
• Proficiency with portfolio and delivery tooling such as Jira, Clarity, ServiceNow, or equivalent.

Preferred Qualifications:

SAP, Ariba, or procurement platform certification, familiarity with agile delivery practices, experience managing outsourced or managed-service providers, and experience in telecommunications or another capital-intensive industry where project systems, construction, and asset accounting interact directly with procurement.