Senior Machine Learning Engineer-Office of the CTO

We help the world run better

At SAP, we keep it simple: you bring your best to us, and we'll bring out the best in you. We're builders touching over 20 industries and 80% of global commerce, and we need your unique talents to help shape what's next. The work is challenging – but it matters. You'll find a place where you can be yourself, prioritize your wellbeing, and truly belong. What's in it for you? Constant learning, skill growth, great benefits, and a team that wants you to grow and succeed.

Job Title: Senior AI/ML Engineer –Office of the CTO

What You’ll Do

As part of the Office of the CTO (OCTO) team, you will work on strategic technology topics that directly support the SAP CTO’s mandate and influence the future direction of SAP’s technology landscape. The role involves driving key initiatives around prototyping, showcase development, and experimentation with emerging technologies, while also researching internal and external products, concepts, and architectures. You will contribute to concept and strategy papers and collaborate closely with product development and product management teams to accelerate the creation and customer adoption of Reference Architectures. A strong combination of architectural thinking, abstraction skills, and hands-on coding expertise is highly valuable for success in this role.

Your Work Will Involve

Developing tooling and content (reference architectures across Platform, Data, AI and Agents) that is published on the SAP Architecture Center including agentic workflow blueprints, LLM integration patterns, and multi-model orchestration topologies. Exploring emerging technologies across AI and Agents, including Neuro-symbolic AI, Knowledge Graphs, MCP (Model Context Protocol), Agent Orchestration, RAG, GraphRAG, Agentic Memory Architectures, Agent Harness Engineering, multi-agent system design and other AI-native patterns as well as frontier model evaluation, inference optimization, and responsible AI guardrails. Prototyping and building proof-points that influence company-wide strategic decisions Contributing to Research, concept notes, technical investigations, and strategy documents (e.g. AI Native North Star Architecture) Providing technology due diligence for buy and partner decisions - evaluating external products, vendors, and technology partners against SAP's strategic architecture direction Participating as a key contributor in company-wide strategic initiatives including All in on AI, AI Native North Star Architecture, CTO Circle, and the SAP Architecture Center Contributing to Executive Board (EB/CTO/CEO) projects - driving cross-organizational technical alignment and influencing SAP's technology strategy at the highest levels

What You Bring

Degree Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field 10+ years of experience in software development and architecture design Strong experience in one or more areas: GenAI / LLM application development, agentic systems, AI/ML engineering, Data and Analytics, Cloud-native architecture. Hands-on development experience with SAP Business Technology Platform including SAP AI Core, SAP Business Data Cloud, or SAP Joule Experience with hyperscalers (Azure, GCP, AWS etc) and Technology partners is a plus Proficiency in at least one programming language such as Java, Node.js, Python with working knowledge of LLM SDKs (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent) and familiarity with vector databases (e.g. HANA Cloud Vector Engine, Pinecone, Weaviate) Understanding agile software development and lifecycle management best practices (GitHub, CI/CD, tests) including LLMOps practices such as prompt versioning, evaluation pipelines (evals), and model observability Familiarity with AI safety concepts, output grounding techniques, and hallucination mitigation strategies in production settings Excellent communication & presentation skills with the ability to convey complex AI and architecture topics to both technical and non-technical audiences Excellent team player, collaborator, and a proactive can-do attitude

Meet your team

You will join the Office of the CTO (OCTO), a globally distributed team that works on technology topics relevant across SAP and its product units—often exploring ideas before they become mainstream within the company. The team investigates front-runner technologies through research, coding experiments, proof-points, and technology strategy initiatives such as the North Star Architecture to help inform strategic technical decisions.

A key focus area is the creation and publication of Reference Architectures that guide SAP and its ecosystem in building interoperable, scalable, and future-ready enterprise solutions. These architectures are published through the SAP Architecture Center and are widely used by customers, partners, and engineering teams across SAP.

You will work in an internationally blended team based in India, collaborating closely with colleagues in Germany and the USA on high-impact strategic initiatives. Since the work evolves rapidly and often deals with emerging technologies, the role requires continuous learning, quick skill acquisition, experimentation, and the ability to work comfortably in ambiguous environments - including the capacity to evaluate, benchmark, and form informed opinions on fast-moving AI capabilities such as reasoning models, long-context architectures, and multimodal systems.

Bring out your best

SAP innovations help more than four hundred thousand customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with two hundred million users and more than one hundred thousand employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, you can bring out your best.

We win with inclusion

SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better world.

SAP is committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provides accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: Careers@sap.com.

For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for the SAP Employee Referral Program, according to the eligibility rules set in the SAP Referral Policy. Specific conditions may apply for roles in Vocational Training.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability, in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local legal requirements.

Successful candidates might be required to undergo a background verification with an external vendor.

AI Usage in the Recruitment Process

For information on the responsible use of AI in our recruitment process, please refer to our Guidelines for Ethical Usage of AI in the Recruiting Process.

Please note that any violation of these guidelines may result in disqualification from the hiring process.

Requisition ID: 453598 | Work Area: Software-Design and Development | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Professional | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: