Enterprise Deployments - Sr. IT Manager

Career Area:
Technology, Digital and Data
Job Description:
Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.
When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.
Enterprise Deployments – Senior IT Manager
Role Definition:
The Deployment Manager leads the enterprise capability responsible for large-scale deployments and ERP modernization across
manufacturing plants and supporting functions. The role is accountable for accelerating deployments from planning through business outcome, with SAP implementations as the primary landscape.
This leader provides direction, challenge, and coaching to program and project managers while aligning the cross-functional teams required for successful delivery. The role is a leader of leaders, building a disciplined organization that can execute multiple complex deployments with clear governance, repeatable methods, transparent risk management, and strong site readiness.
The Deployment Manager acts as a trusted advisor for Caterpillar leaders and guides the enterprise practices for SAP change management,
release management, environment management, data migration, testing, development, and key-user training.
What You Will Do:
Enterprise Deployment Strategy & Portfolio Leadership:
Continuously improve the enterprise deployment framework, governance, playbooks, quality gates, and performance measures.
Continue rigorous management of the implementation roadmap and capacity plan to ensure the plan is executable.
Guide sequencing, mobilization, interdependency management, resource planning, and escalation across concurrent programs.
Provide executives with concise, fact-based insight into readiness, risk, decisions, tradeoffs, and recovery actions.
Program & Project Leadership:
Lead, coach, and hold accountable program and project management leaders responsible for complex, multi-workstream implementations.
Establish expectations for integrated plans, critical-path management, financial stewardship, dependency control, status transparency, issue resolution, and benefits transition.
Create a strong operating cadence across business, site, product, platform, architecture, security, infrastructure, data, and supplier teams.
Intervene decisively when execution is off track, aligning leaders on recovery plans and protecting committed business outcomes.
Site Readiness, Change & Adoption:
Guide organizational change management and site readiness from early engagement through stabilization, ensuring leaders, users, processes, training, and support are prepared for go-live.
Promote practical, site-centered deployment methods that respect local manufacturing constraints while keeping enterprise standards and template integrity.
Ensure operational readiness criteria are explicit, measurable, independently challenged, and tied to go/no-go decisions.
Ensure feedback loops from each implementation are incorporated into future waves, playbooks, estimates, and deployments.
Release, Environment & Cutover Management:
Provide guidance for release management across build, test, training, mock cutover, production, and stabilization landscapes.
Ensure release plans, environment calendars, refreshes, transports, integrations, security, infrastructure, and business events are coordinated end to end.
Sponsor integrated cutover planning, rehearsals, command-center operations, defect triage, hypercare, and transition to steady-state support.
Advance automation, observability, repeatability, and control to improve release quality and reduce deployment risk.
Data Migration, Testing & Quality Engineering:
Provide direction for data migration strategy and execution, including ownership, cleansing, mapping, conversion, reconciliation, mock cycles, controls, and business signoff.
Provide direction for the large deployment testing center of excellence, strengthening test strategy, tooling, automation, traceability, defect management, performance validation, and entry/exit criteria.
Ensure end-to-end process, integration, regression, security, performance, user acceptance, and operational readiness testing are planned as one quality system.
Use evidence-based quality measures to make risks visible and support objective deployment decisions.
SAP Development Center of Excellence:
Guide SAP development engineering standards, governance, code quality, documentation, and technical assurance.
Align development practices with architecture, cybersecurity, integration, data, release, and support requirements.
Build internal capability while using systems integrators and suppliers selectively, with clear accountability for knowledge transfer and sustainable ownership.
Reduce unnecessary customization and technical debt by reinforcing standard solutions, design simplicity, and lifecycle accountability.
People, Partner & Supplier Leadership:
Lead a global, multi-sourced organization of leaders and specialists across deployment management and the supporting functions.
Hire, develop, coach, and keep high-performing leaders; succession plans and development for critical deployment roles.
Create a culture of enterprise-first decisions, respectful challenge, ownership, learning, and innovation.
Hold partners and systems integrators accountable for outcomes, quality, transparency, capability transfer, and commercial commitments.
What You Have:
Enterprise deployment leadership experience. Demonstrated success leading complex ERP or large-scale enterprise system implementations across multiple sites, business units, or regions; SAP deployment experience strongly preferred.
Leader of Leaders Experience. Experience directing senior program, project, functional, technical, data, testing, change, or release leaders in a matrixed environment.
Collaboration & Matrixed Leadership: Experience collaborating with peers across a matrixed organization to drive enterprise priorities, build alignment, and deliver business outcomes. Demonstrated ability to foster collaboration across business functions, technology teams, and external partners while balancing stakeholder needs, resolving conflicts, and promoting shared accountability for results.
Manufacturing acumen: Strong understanding of manufacturing operations and the disciplines needed to introduce major technology changes without compromising safety, quality, delivery, or continuity.
Execution system depth: Practical command of program governance, integrated planning, cutover, hypercare, organizational change, releasee management, data migration, testing, and software development lifecycle controls.
Executive influence: Ability to communicate complex delivery conditions clearly, frame decisions and tradeoffs, challenge constructively, and align senior business and technology stakeholders.
Commercial leadership: Experience managing systems integrators, software partners, and multi-sourced delivery teams, including accountability for outcomes, knowledge transfer, and value.
Talent builder: History of developing leaders, creating high-performing teams, establishing succession pipelines, and institutionalizing durable enterprise capability.
Additional Details:
The location for this position is East Peoria, IL.
This role requires 5 days onsite.
Benefits: This position is eligible for stock or other equity grants pursuant to Caterpillar's long-term incentive plan.
Relocation is available for qualified candidates.
What You Will Get -
Our goal at Caterpillar is for you to have a rewarding career. Our teams are critical to the success of our customers who build a better world.
Here you earn more than just a salary because we value your performance. We offer a total rewards package that provides benefits on day one (medical, dental, vision, RX, and 401K) along with the potential of an annual bonus. Additional benefits include paid vacation days and paid holidays.
All qualified individuals - Including minorities, females, veterans, and individuals with disabilities - are encouraged to apply.
About Caterpillar -
Caterpillar Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. For nearly one hundred years, we’ve been helping customers build a better, more sustainable world and are committed and contributing to a reduced-carbon future. Our innovative products and services, backed by our global dealer network, provide exceptional va