SAP MDG Specialist (For independent contractors)

Senior Business Applications Engineer evaluates, designs, configures, installs, deploys and maintains applications that are highly impacting for Booking.com employees. They serve as the primary engineer responsible for the company-wide Business Intelligence platform. They build and maintain strong relationships with application stakeholders throughout the organization, including with infrastructure, networking and security teams. Senior Business Applications Engineer coaches, mentor and share knowledge with more junior staff.

Key Responsibilities

Software Systems Design

• Is responsible to evaluate possible architecture solutions by taking into account cost, business requirements, technology requirements, and emerging technologies.

• Is responsible to describe the implications of changing an existing system or adding a new system to a specific area, by having a broad, high-level understanding of the infrastructure and architecture of our systems.

• Is responsible to help grow the business and/or accelerate software development by applying engineering techniques (e.g., prototyping, spiking, and vendor evaluation) and standards.

• Is responsible to meet business needs by designing solutions that meet current requirements and are adaptable for future enhancements.

Technical Incident Management

• Is responsible to address and resolve live production issues by mitigating the customer impact within SLA.

• Is responsible to improve the overall reliability of systems by producing long-term solutions through root cause analysis.

• Is responsible to keep track of incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues.

Coaching / Mentoring

• Has sufficient knowledge to coach, guide, and improve the overall performance of stakeholders and colleagues at all levels, when appropriate, by sharing experience, knowledge, and approaches to work.

Automation and Toil Reduction

• Is responsible to ensure that infrastructure stays current by reducing technical debt, searching for bottlenecks, and preparing for scaling.

• Is responsible to reduce cost of operations and maintenance by leveraging new technologies, automation, and partnering with vendors to ensure we stay current.

• Is responsible to reduce human labor by writing small software features that address availability, scalability, latency, and efficiency.

Monitoring and Alerting Improvements

• Is responsible to review and verify performance of production systems and network infrastructure by continuously monitoring appropriate observability metrics, business KPIs, and capacity planning, and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

• Is responsible to improve application reliability by partnering with development teams to advise on setting appropriate observability metrics and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

Production Systems Best Practices

• Is responsible to secure production systems and network infrastructure by following company and industry security best practices and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

• Is responsible to ensure compliance at all times by following and improving working practices and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

• Is responsible to reduce bus factor by documenting architecture of production systems and network infrastructure and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

• Is responsible to reduce the impact of live production issues by writing and maintaining runbooks, opdocs, and identifying procedures to restore normal operations of production systems and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.

Architectural Guidance

• Has sufficient knowledge to advise product teams towards a technical solution that meets the functional, non-functional, and architectural requirements by challenging the rationale for an application design and providing context in the wider architectural landscape.

• Has sufficient knowledge to set a clear direction for a technical capability by evaluating and aligning the target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholders.

Critical Thinking

• Is responsible to systematically identify patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and to find solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking.

• Is responsible to constructively evaluate and develop ideas, plans, and solutions by reviewing them, objectively taking into account external knowledge, initiating 'SMART' improvements, and articulating their rationale.

Continuous Quality and Process Improvement

• Is responsible to identify opportunities for process, system and structural improvements (i.e. performance gains) by examining and evaluating current process flows, methods and standards.

• Is responsible to design and implement relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices that enable business performance.

Effective Communication

• Is responsible to deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audience.

• Is responsible to achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practising active listening.

• Is responsible to ask relevant (follow-up) questions to properly engage with the speaker and really understand what they are saying, by applying listening and reflection techniques.

Requirements & Skills

Mandatory (Must-Have) Skills:

• 6+ years of experience in SAP MDG.

• Strong SAP MDG skills, MDG-F, and MDG-BP.

• Specialization in SAP MDG.

• Knows how to administer, grow and implement governance for enterprise Business Intelligence tools.

• Knows how to implement large-scale applications using both SaaS and off-the-shelf solutions.

Good-to-Have Skills:

• SAP FICO and SAP FICA.