Director Legacy System Integration & Decommissioning

Category/Area of Expertise: IT & Technology
Job Requisition: 489818
Address: USA-NC-Salisbury-2085 Harrison Road
Store Code: IT Executive & Administration (5134402)
Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, is part of the U.S. family of brands, which includes five leading omnichannel grocery brands - Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Our associates support the brands with a wide range of services, including Finance, Legal, Sustainability, Commercial, Digital and E-commerce, Technology and more.
Primary Purpose
The Director I, Legacy Systems Integration & Decommissioning serves as the senior leader responsible for managing the complete lifecycle of legacy application systems during ADUSA's SAP S/4HANA Retail Spine transformation program. This strategic role owns the critical pathway between existing legacy systems and the new SAP S/4HANA platform, ensuring seamless continuity of business operations while systematically transitioning from outdated technology infrastructure to modern, cloud-enabled solutions.
Reporting into the ERP Transformation executive leadership structure, this position architects and executes comprehensive strategies for: maintaining and enhancing legacy systems that must integrate with SAP during the transformation, establishing robust test environments and data management frameworks supporting end-to-end testing, orchestrating the systematic decommissioning and retirement of legacy applications post-migration, and preserving historical data in compliance with regulatory requirements while minimizing ongoing technical debt and operational costs.
This leader partners closely with functional tech leads, data migration teams, System Integrator (SI) technical resources, enterprise architecture, infrastructure teams, and legal/compliance stakeholders to ensure legacy systems remain stable and functional throughout the transformation, enable comprehensive testing and validation, and are properly archived and decommissioned following successful cutover to SAP S/4HANA. The role demands deep technical expertise in legacy application technologies, integration architectures, data management, compliance requirements, and decommissioning methodologies combined with strong program management capabilities to coordinate complex, multi-year transition activities across 20-30+ legacy applications supporting ADUSA's multi-brand retail operations.
Our flexible/ hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days at one of our core locations and 2 remote days. Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
Duties & Responsibilities
Legacy Systems, Strategy, & Inventory Assessment

• Lead assessment and cataloging of ADUSA's legacy applications partnering with the Architecture teams.
• Maintain a legacy systems roadmap and transition plan documenting architecture, infrastructure, business dependencies, integration with SAP S/4HANA, data complexity, regulatory requirements, technical debt, TCO, sunset timelines, and decommissioning strategies (retire, archive, migrate, or maintain).
• Conduct dependency and risk analyses for each system covering integrations, critical processes, stakeholder dependencies, compliance, data relationships, infrastructure, vendors, and knowledge retention risks.
• Establish governance for legacy lifecycle management, including retention vs. decommissioning decisions, enhancement approval workflows, resource allocation, risk frameworks, and stakeholder communication protocols.

Legacy System Enhancements, Maintenance & Integration

• Oversee maintenance and support of legacy systems during SAP transformation, including incident resolution, security patching, performance monitoring, and vendor coordination.
• Lead integration of legacy systems with SAP S/4HANA, covering interface design, development, testing, and validation of data flows.
• Manage selective enhancements to support business continuity and SAP integration, ensuring quality, change control, and regression testing.
• Establish monitoring and issue resolution processes for integrations, including real-time alerts, triage workflows, and performance optimization.

Test Environment Strategy & Data Management

• Design and provision test environments for legacy systems supporting end-to-end integration testing with SAP, ensuring data currency and environment control.
• Lead test data management, including data extraction, masking, synthetic data creation, and compliance with privacy regulations.
• Coordinate end-to-end integration testing across SAP and legacy systems, covering scenario design, execution, defect resolution, and reporting.
• Ensure legacy systems support performance, volume, and stress testing during parallel runs and critical test cycles.

Cutover Planning, Execution & Hypercare Support

• Lead legacy system cutover planning and execution for SAP waves, including runbooks, dry runs, and go/no-go readiness assessments.
• Oversee technical cutover and data transition, including final extracts, reconciliation, interface reconfiguration, and smoke testing.
• Provide hypercare support post-go-live, ensuring rapid issue resolution, daily status reporting, and fallback procedures.
• Coordinate with business stakeholders on transition readiness, training, and validation of critical legacy functions.

Legacy System Decommissioning & Data Archival

• Develop and execute decommissioning strategies balancing compliance, cost, and business needs, including phased retirement and stakeholder approvals.
• Lead historical data archiving ensuring regulatory compliance, efficient access, and cost optimization.
• Implement secure, auditable archiving architecture preserving business context, with backup and disaster recovery provisions.
• Manage post-decommission governance, including archive access, compliance monitoring, and lifecycle optimization.

Interim State Models & Data Synchronization

• Define interim state data models enabling hybrid operations across SAP and legacy systems, including master and transactional data governance.
• Implement data synchronization mechanisms for wave-based deployments, ensuring consistency, conflict resolution, and performance optimization.
• Support complex parallel operations with data isolation, reporting consolidation, audit trails, and reconciliation procedures.
• Coordinate historical data migration and conversion, including cleansing, mapping, validation, and cutover execution.

Compliance, Security & Risk Management

• Ensure legacy systems remain compliant with financial, privacy, payment, industry-specific, and HR regulations.
• Maintain security posture through patching, vulnerability management, access controls, and monitoring despite aging systems.
• Manage risks from legacy dependencies, aging technology, knowledge gaps, and vendor sunset scenarios.
• Coordinate with legal, compliance, and audit teams for data retention, legal holds, audits, and regulatory readiness.

Team Leadership, Vendor Management & Stakeholder Engagement

• Build and lead a specialized legacy systems team with clear roles and accountability.
• Manage legacy system vendors and third-party support, ensuring SLAs, contract optimization, and issue resolution.
• Drive stakeholder engagement and change management for legacy transitions, including executive reporting and user communication.
• Provide thought leadership on legacy management and decommissioning, contributing to best practices and enterprise standards.

Financial Management & Cost Optimization

• Develop and track decommissioning business cases with TCO analysis, cost avoidance, resource redeployment, and ROI evaluation.
• Report financial performance and cost savings, including variance analysis, milestone tracking, and executive reporting.
• Optimize investment in archiving and data management solutions while ensuring ongoing cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, CIS or related (or equivalent related work experience)
• 12+ years of progressive experience in enterprise application management, system integration, and legacy system decommissioning
• Working knowledge of ADUSA's legacy systems across legacy AUSA and legacy Delhaize systems.
• Proven track record leading legacy system decommissioning projects
• Experience managing complex application portfolios in retail, consumer goods, or distribution-intensive industries with understanding of merchandising, supply chain, and financial systems
• Strong coordination, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Comfort with program analytics, budgeting, forecasting, and resource allocation processes.
• 25-50% travel required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in technology, Additional training or certifications in relevant field of study
• Ability to synthesize executive sponsor inputs, functional team requirements, and external partner contributions into integrated delivery plans.
• Experience supporting complex change, data, or process streams within transformation programs

Salary Range: $160,000 - $240,000
Actual compensation offered to a candidate may vary based on their unique qualifications and experience, internal equity, and market conditions. Final compensation decisions will be made in accordance with company policies and applicable laws.
#li-mm1 #li-hybrid
At Ahold Delhaize USA, we provide services to one of the largest portfolios of grocery companies in the nation, and we're actively seeking top talent.
Our team shares a common motivation to drive change, take ownership and enable our brands to better care for their customers. We thrive on supporting great local grocery brands and their strategies.
Our associates are the heartbeat of our organization. We are committed to offering a welcoming work environment where all associates can succeed and thrive. Guided by our values of courage, care, teamwork, integrity (and even a little humor), we are dedicated to being a great place to work.
We believe in collaboration, curiosity, and continuous learning in all that we think, create and do. While building a culture where personal and professional growth are just as important as business growth, we invest in our people, empowering them to learn, grow and deliver at all levels of the business.