Manager - Enterprise Applications and Integration

About the Role

The Manager of Enterprise Applications and Integration is a strategic and operational leader responsible for the vision, delivery, and optimization of the university’s core institutional platforms. Operating within a complex higher education ecosystem, this role oversees the technical teams managing critical systems like SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), the Student Information System (SIS), Learning Management System (LMS), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), as well as overseeing software development and integration. The Manager works in partnership with business leaders to ensure these applications are secure, modern, seamlessly integrated, and directly supportive of KAUST’s research excellence, student success, faculty teaching, and administrative efficiency. It provides people leadership for specialist teams, including the Integration Engineering Lead, while remaining technically credible and accountable for modern architecture, Agile/DevOps delivery and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Shape the enterprise application roadmap in partnership with the relevant 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 (e.g., Ellucian, SAP, Microsoft, Blackboard).
• Champion data democratisation, ensuring enterprise systems break down data silos between academic, financial, and student affairs departments.
• Act as the strategic partner of business owners including the Registrar, Chief Financial Officer, Chief People Officer, Vice-Presidents and their key Directors, working with them to translate their business strategy and objectives into the enterprise application roadmap.
• Modernize delivery frameworks, safely shifting the team from traditional waterfall deployment cycles to product-led, agile, and DevOps methodologies appropriate to 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 key 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, institutional data governance policies, enterprise architecture principles, standards and patterns as appropriate.
• 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, psychological 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

• 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 build trusted partnerships across KAUST.
• Strong vendor management and engagement skills, with a track record of managing complex vendor relationships, vendor roadmaps, contracts and SLA’s, 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.