Senior Programme Lead - One Payroll (SAP S/4HANA), Rome, Italy

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JOB TITLE: Senior Programme Lead – One Payroll (SAP S/4HANA) TYPE OF CONTRACT: Consultant (Level 3) UNIT/DIVISION: Technology Digital Services DUTY STATION (City, Country): Rome, Italy (HQ) DURATION: 11 months

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT: The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, working towards achieving a world with zero hunger. WFP is implementing the One Payroll Programme, a strategic digital transformation initiative aimed at consolidating payroll systems into a single SAP-based solution, aligned with the ongoing SAP S/4HANA upgrade, Workday and the HR solutions, and UN80 objectives. Reporting to the Chief of Digital Services (TECD), the Programme Lead will lead end-to-end delivery of the workstreams within the One Payroll Programme, ensuring successful implementation of the phased SAP rollout, including migration of UNDP- and PASport-managed populations and alignment with HR, Finance, and TEC stakeholders. The role requires strong leadership across complex, multi-stakeholder environments, ensuring delivery of a high-quality payroll solution while managing risks, dependencies, and organizational change. The incumbent ensures alignment between strategic programme objectives and operational execution, proactively managing risks, dependencies, and delivery constraints while safeguarding timelines, quality, and budget. The role contributes to establishing a sustainable, centralized payroll operating model, ultimately enabling improved efficiency, compliance, and service delivery across WFP.

Programme Leadership and Delivery

Lead the end-to-end delivery of the One Payroll Programme, ensuring full alignment with the agreed phased SAP consolidation strategy and overall programme roadmap. Drive execution across all phases of the project lifecycle, including initiation, detailed design, build/configuration, data migration, testing, deployment, and post-go-live stabilization, ensuring quality and timeliness of deliverables. Ensure deliverables meet defined business requirements, technical standards, and operational readiness criteria, with a strong focus on scalability and sustainability.

Stakeholder Engagement and Governance

Act as the primary coordination and integration point across TEC, HR, CFO, and Country Offices, ensuring effective collaboration and alignment on priorities, scope, and timelines. Support and actively contribute to programme governance structures, including preparing materials for Steering Committees and leadership forums, facilitating decision-making, and ensuring effective escalation of risks and issues. Establish and maintain structured communication mechanisms to ensure transparency, manage expectations, and secure stakeholder buy-in across all levels of the organization. Ensure strong country engagement model. Oversee Change Management and communications ensuring stakeholder buy-in, user readiness and adoption of new payroll processes.

Planning, Scope and Delivery Management

Develop, maintain, and continuously refine integrated project plans that capture scope, milestones, dependencies, critical path activities, and resource requirements across multiple workstreams. Ensure effective scope management through structured requirements gathering, validation, prioritization, and control of change requests.

Oversee execution of key delivery activities, including data cleansing and validation, system configuration, integration, user acceptance testing, parallel runs, cutover planning, and go-live readiness. Monitor and report on delivery performance against established baselines, implementing corrective actions where required.

Risk, Issue, and Dependency Management

Proactively identify, assess, and manage programme risks, including those related to system integration, data quality, compliance, and operational continuity. Maintain and regularly update risk and issue registers, ensuring appropriate mitigation and contingency plans are defined and implemented. Track and manage cross-functional and cross-system dependencies, ensuring alignment between technical and business workstreams and preventing bottlenecks in delivery. Escalate critical risks and issues through governance channels in a timely and structured manner.

Financial and Resource Management

Lead detailed budget planning, forecasting, and financial tracking in line with the approved business case. Monitor resource utilization across internal teams and external partners, ensuring optimal allocation and efficiency. Identify potential budget deviations and propose corrective measures to maintain financial control and programme viability.

Education

Advanced university degree in IT, Business Administration, Finance, or related field.

Certification

PMP, PRINCE2, Agile or equivalent certification desirable.

Experience

10-12 years of progressive project/programme management experience. Proven experience in large-scale ERP/SAP implementations. Experience in Workday, HR/payroll or shared services transformation is highly desirable. Experience managing global, multi-stakeholder programmes.

Knowledge & Skills

An understanding of how technology can optimize the work of often geographically distributed groups and teams. Familiarity with an international working environment.

Languages

Fluency (level C) in English language. Knowledge of Spanish, French or Arabic a strong asset.

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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

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