Forward Deployed Application/ ML Principal Engineer

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.

What you’ll build

In this role, you design, build, and operate AI-native enterprise applications that combine cloud-native software engineering with production-grade machine learning and agentic AI capabilities, embedded directly within customer environments and fast-moving delivery teams.

You translate ambiguous business and operational requirements into secure, scalable, and reliable solutions - owning technical delivery from discovery and prototyping through deployment, stabilization, and successful handover to platform or operations teams.

You are accountable for the technical quality, reliability, and impact of application solutions within your scope and apply modern AI-assisted engineering practices and architectural guardrails aligned with SAP standards to enable responsible and scalable AI adoption.

In this role, you will:

• Design, develop, and operate production-grade, cloud-native enterprise applications integrating AI capabilities such as large language models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agent-based workflows.
• Embed directly into customer projects and fast-moving cross-functional teams to rapidly understand business processes, technical landscapes, and operational challenges.
• Translate business and product requirements into robust application architectures, balancing speed, quality, security, and long-term maintainability.
• Rapidly prototype, iterate, and productionize solutions in customer environments, adapting reference architectures and reusable assets to real-world enterprise constraints.
• Own application delivery end-to-end - from problem framing and prototyping through deployment, observability, and production operations.
• Apply AI-assisted engineering practices, evaluation frameworks, and architectural guardrails to ensure compliant, trustworthy, and high-quality solutions.
• Ensure delivery milestones, quality standards, and technical objectives are met, proactively managing risks and technical escalations within scope.
• Act as a key technical interface to customers and internal stakeholders, clearly communicating solution approaches, trade-offs, and progress.
• Contribute to engineering standards, best practices, and reusable components to improve efficiency and consistency across solutions.

• 10 years of hands-on experience in software and application engineering for cloud-native, enterprise, and SaaS environments, with strong knowledge of architectural principles such as scalability, security, and reliability.
• Proven ability to design and deliver AI-native applications, utilizing large language models, RAG architectures, vector databases, and agentic systems to innovate enterprise workflows.
• Strong proficiency in widely used AI/ML Python libraries and frameworks, with exposure to data pipelines and MLOps practices.
• Skilled in integrating Agentic AI into complex business processes, ensuring responsible and effective use of AI agents within enterprise operations.
• Strong problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and exposure to design thinking practices; proven ability to mentor teams and establish development guardrails and best practices.
• Proven ability to mentor and inspire teams, establish best development guardrails and practices, and drive engineering culture across delivery teams.
• Exposure to SAP AI technologies such as SAP AI Core, Vectorization, Joule Studio, RPT-1, and Business Data Cloud is a strong advantage.
• Experience owning solutions across the full application lifecycle - from design and implementation to deployment and production operations.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams and customer stakeholders on complex technical topics.
• Learning mindset, technical leadership, and accountability in high-impact, ambiguous environments; you proactively leverage AI in everyday workflows to ensure high-quality outputs.

Where you belong:

You will be part of a growing AI and industry expert team dedicated to serving customers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. We are building a collaborative, high-impact environment that brings together deep AI expertise, strong industry knowledge, and regional understanding to help customers innovate, transform, and lead in their markets. This team thrives on turning complex business challenges into practical, scalable solutions. We value curiosity, ownership, and continuous learning - and encourage new ideas where real-world impact matters. You will thrive here if you are customer-centric, motivated by meaningful outcomes, and comfortable navigating ambiguity in a fast-evolving AI landscape.

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.