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About the Role
As a SAP Security Consultant (known internally as a SAP Role & Authorisation Administrator), you will be working within a team of SAP technical experts responsible for supporting, maintaining, enhancing, troubleshooting, and resolving SAP roles and authorisation related issues with the University’s SAP landscape, which is in a mixed public/private Cloud configuration.
You will facilitate the innovation and development of the Open University’s digital transformation in roles and authorisation aspects of the SAP landscape. Working with Architecture, Infrastructure, and other teams across IT to ensure best practice and process compliance across deliverables. As well as working with Project Management to own and drive project deliverables, ensuring that projects are delivered with adherence to agreed roles and authorisation designs. Leading the process and capability improvement to ensure quality roles and authorisation design and delivery across the University.
Candidates with sound technical knowledge and experience will be supported by on the job and, if necessary, external training.
Key Responsibilities
- Manage and support SAP Roles & Authorisations across S/4HANA, ECC, BW and Fiori systems.
- Design, implement and maintain secure SAP role structures following best practice.
- Troubleshoot and resolve SAP access and security issues across the SAP landscape.
- Work with IT architecture, infrastructure and security teams to ensure compliant access design.
- Deliver roles and authorisation activities for SAP projects and system changes.
- Review existing role designs and improve them to strengthen security and usability.
- Perform regular user access reviews and governance controls.
- Support SAP upgrades, releases and major transformation programmes.
- Ensure secure role migration during system changes and cloud transformations.
- Continuously improve SAP security processes, documentation and standards.
About You
Essential:
- Educated to degree level in a Computing & IT related subject or equivalent professional experience.
- Good knowledge of SAP roles and authorisation (R&A) or strong technical background in identity, access management, SAP security with the ability to demonstrate the full range of SAP R&A skills, from research and design, to post-implementation support.
- Knowledge and experience of software engineering tools, practises, methods and standards including some of but not limited to Cloud IaaS and PaaS Services, infrastructure as code, continuous integration & continuous delivery.
- Experience of working in at least one large enterprise system implementation (SAP S/4HANA, ECC, BW).
- Experience of troubleshooting and access control issues in enterprise platforms (SAP S/4HANA, Fiori).
- Capable of implementing regular access review.
- Experience of reviewing existing role design, finding out design faults or gaps, recommending improvements and implementing changes to achieve stronger and best suitable security measures.
Desirable:
- Experience of SAP system upgrades or major platform transformation projects.
- Knowledge of SAP GRC and transformation from ERP to S/4HANA exposure is desirable.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be approximately once per month.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams during the week commencing 13 July 2026.
Early closing date notification
While most roles will remain open until the advertised closing date, applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis. In some cases, vacancies may close earlier if a sufficient number of suitable applications have been received and equality impacts have been appropriately considered. All roles will remain advertised for a minimum of one week before any early closure is implemented.
If you have started an application or were in the process of applying when the advert closed, we encourage you to get in touch. We are committed to understanding individual circumstances and can offer further support where needed, including reasonable adjustments for applicants with protected characteristics.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job description.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
