SAP Basis Lead

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced SAP Basis Lead to join our Technology team here at Penguin. This role is offered on a permanent basis from our office in Embassy Gardens, London.

This role will take responsibility for the oversight of our SAP technical environment, leading the team in configuring, monitoring, tuning and troubleshooting the SAP technical environment successfully.

About the team

The Technology team provides expertise and effective solutions to Penguin Random House. We integrate flexibility and agility which supports our consistent way of working. We set ourselves up for success by holding ourselves accountable and welcoming change. Each member of the Technology team brings skill and initiative to their role; we take personal ownership within a one team culture, working collaboratively to meet expectations from our stakeholders who trust us to deliver.

The role

Key responsibilities

• Lead and support the SAP Basis workstreams, including oversight of the offshore team, ensuring activity is aligned with our Technology Strategy, agreed standards and best practice.
• Install, configure and upgrade SAP HANA environments, including multi-tenant database containers, software revisions and patches using tools such as HDBLCM.
• Maintain and optimise our SAP landscape, including ECC, BTP, GRC, IAS (Cloud Identity Services), Cloud ALM and Signavio, ensuring strong system performance, availability and stability.
• Monitor and troubleshoot SAP HANA and wider SAP environments, analysing alerts, logs, traces, memory and CPU usage using tools including SAP HANA Studio and HANA Cockpit.
• Manage backup, recovery and disaster-recovery capabilities, including point-in-time recovery, system replication, failover mechanisms and integration with external backup tools such as Backint.
• Apply your understanding of SAP HANA architecture and internals, including in-memory storage, memory management, persistence and CPU resource allocation, to support effective performance and problem resolution.
• Work confidently within Linux environments, including file-system navigation, process management and basic shell scripting, alongside strong SQL and database fundamentals.
• Manage SAP transports, client administration and technical changes in line with PRH change-management processes, whilst planning and supporting system, database and kernel upgrades.
• Work closely with infrastructure colleagues to ensure backup, recovery and resilience approaches remain effective and aligned with best practice.
• Maintain accurate technical documentation across SAP instances, lead the resolution of complex technical issues and provide clear status updates to management.
• Mentor and guide the Basis team, whilst providing on-call and out-of-hours go-live or upgrade support where required.

What you’ll bring

Essential criteria

• Significant experience of SAP Basis support and project delivery, including installations, upgrades and migrations.
• People management experience, with the ability to lead, support and develop a technical team.
• Relevant experience of SAP BTP and Cloud ALM.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues.
• Good written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable criteria

• Experience working with Okta in an SAP environment.
• Experience of Automic or another job scheduling tool.
• Professional SAP Basis certification.

Application instructions

Please apply with your CV by 23:59 on Thursday 1st October 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and the advert may close at any time. We would encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

AI

Here at Penguin, we believe in the power of authenticity and human creativity. When you apply for a position, we want to encourage you to showcase your unique voice. Throughout our recruitment process, please share your own thoughts, experiences, and skills. This helps us get a true sense of who you are and what you might bring to our team.

We celebrate creativity and diverse perspectives, so please be yourself! While we recognise AI tools can be helpful, we recommend using them thoughtfully to ensure your responses reflect you.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt-in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section.

There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview. We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, for us to support your request.

Salary

The salary for this opportunity is c.£70,000 depending on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus a generous bonus scheme and benefits.

Hybrid working

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important.

For this role we expect that you will work from our head office in Embassy Gardens, London a minimum of 2 days per week (Tuesday & Thursday) with additional days for team meetings, townhalls etc as required. There may also be occasional travel to our warehouse site in Frating, Colchester.

Disclosure requirements pertaining to the collection of your personal data:

Responsible for processing the information provided in your application is the company specified in the job advertisement, with its registered office as indicated. The company processes your data for the purpose of establishing an employment relationship on the basis of Art. 6 (1) b GDPR / Section 26 (1) sentence 1 BDSG.

The retention period for your data is determined by the statutory time limits applicable in the respective country, beginning upon completion of the recruitment process. You can find these here.

You can contact the company’s Data Protection Officer at the above-mentioned postal address.

Further information on data protection and your rights can be found here.

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