Manager Enterprise Applications Data & Integration📣 إعلان

About the Role

KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) is seeking a Manager Enterprise Applications Data & Integration to join its team in Thuwal, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. This full-time role requires 5-10 years of relevant experience. The Manager serves as a strategic and operational leader, responsible for the vision, delivery, and optimization of the university’s core institutional platforms. This position oversees technical teams managing critical systems such as SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), the Student Information System (SIS), Learning Management System (LMS), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), alongside software development and integration initiatives.

The role involves partnering with business leaders to ensure applications are secure, modern, seamlessly integrated, and directly support KAUST’s research excellence, student success, faculty teaching, and administrative efficiency. The Manager provides people leadership for specialist teams, including the Integration Engineering Lead, while maintaining technical credibility and accountability for modern architecture, Agile/DevOps delivery, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Shape the enterprise application roadmap in partnership with business owners, transitioning legacy, on-premise university systems to modern, agile SaaS platforms that enable business strategy and objectives.
• Direct complex vendor partnerships, managing negotiations, service level agreements (SLAs), and system integrators for major institutional platforms (*, Ellucian, SAP, Microsoft, Blackboard).
• Champion data democratization, ensuring enterprise systems break down data silos between academic, financial, and student affairs departments.
• Act as a strategic partner to business owners including the Registrar, Chief Financial Officer, Chief People Officer, Vice-Presidents, and their key Directors, translating their business strategy and objectives into the enterprise application roadmap.
• Modernize delivery frameworks, shifting the team from traditional waterfall deployment cycles to product-led, agile, and DevOps methodologies appropriate for complex enterprise applications.
• Enforce robust application lifecycle management, including automated testing, strict release management, and planned maintenance windows that align with the academic calendar.
• Partner with internal stakeholders such as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Enterprise Architecture to secure highly sensitive institutional data, maintaining strict compliance with regulations like PDPL, NCA directives, and institutional data governance policies.
• Directly lead, mentor, and inspire a diverse team of application specialists, analysts, developers, and database administrators.
• Orchestrate team upskilling initiatives, intentionally pivoting staff competencies away from legacy systems and toward modern cloud-based administration, SAP integrations, and Microsoft cloud architectures.
• Establish clear work allocation approaches, team goals, and transparent accountability frameworks, ensuring the team operates with a transparent, high-velocity, service-oriented mindset.
• Partner with other IT teams to foster a transparent, psychologically safe, and collaborative culture, breaking down existing technical sub-silos, fostering a growth mindset, and a high-performing team.

Qualifications

• Essential: Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, software engineering, data/technology management, or an equivalent combination of qualifications and relevant experience.
• Preferable: Professional certification or equivalent experience in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, Agile/DevOps, IT service management, SAP, or integration technologies.

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated capability in building, scaling, and managing technical application teams, ideally during periods of technological migration or structural change.
• Demonstrated capability in managing financial resources, significant budgets, and high-value contracts.
• Strong communication skills with a proven ability to communicate complex business, technical, and risk issues clearly to executives, business stakeholders, and technical teams, and to build trusted partnerships across KAUST.
• Strong vendor management and engagement skills, with a track record of managing complex vendor relationships, vendor roadmaps, contracts, and SLAs, holding vendors and service providers accountable for outcomes.

Preferred Skills

• Practical knowledge of Ellucian Banner (SaaS or on-premise), with a preference for candidates who have led or participated in a full-lifecycle Banner implementation.
• Deep understanding of SAP environments (ECC or S/4HANA) and how finance/HR modules intersect with academic administrative data.
• Foundational understanding of Blackboard Learn configurations, building blocks, and LTI integrations.
• Strong familiarity with Microsoft Azure, M365, and Power Platform for identity management (SSO), productivity, and lightweight automation.

Work Environment

This full-time position is based at KAUST in Thuwal, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The role involves leading and mentoring a diverse technical team and fostering a collaborative, growth-oriented culture within IT and across the university to achieve institutional objectives.