Forward Deployed Principal Data Scientist

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, develop, and apply advanced data science, statistical, and machine learning methods to solve complex, business-critical problems. Embedded directly within customer environments and fast-moving delivery teams, you translate strategic and operational challenges into rigorous analytical solutions at speed. You work closely with customers to deliver scalable, enterprise-grade outcomes that drive measurable business value. You are accountable for the quality, impact, and delivery of complex analytical initiatives - acting as a subject-matter expert, managing ambiguity, and ensuring data-driven solutions are robust, reliable, and aligned with business objectives.

In this role, you will:

• Transform complex business challenges into data-driven intelligence by identifying high-value problems, framing them analytically, and engineering robust features and insights.
• Design, develop, train, and implement mathematical models, algorithms, and machine learning solutions to solve complex business problems.
• Apply advanced techniques across exploratory analysis, statistical modeling, experimentation, forecasting, segmentation, anomaly detection, causal analysis, and machine learning.
• Integrate analytical and machine learning solutions into products, prototypes, or business processes, ensuring enterprise-grade scalability and robustness.
• Define success metrics, quantify business impact, and translate analytical results into clear, actionable recommendations for decision-makers.
• Lead or manage complex analytical workstreams or projects, including deliverables, milestones, risks, and escalations, as appropriate.
• Communicate insights, trade-offs, and recommendations effectively to cross-functional teams and customer stakeholders, influencing decisions through evidence and expertise.
• Work in an embedded, customer-facing setup, collaborating closely with customer teams to deeply understand their data, applications, and business context - co-developing impactful data and AI-driven solutions.

• 10 years of expert-level proficiency in data science and machine learning, with strong command of Python and SQL, and the ability to design, validate, and optimize end-to-end analytical and ML solutions.
• Hands-on expertise with Python and ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, and XGBoost.
• Deep applied knowledge of statistics and experimentation, including hypothesis testing, experimental design, causal inference, and uncertainty interpretation.
• Proven experience applying a wide range of ML techniques - classification, forecasting, clustering, recommendation systems, anomaly detection - balancing accuracy, robustness, interpretability, and usability at scale.
• Strong capability to translate ambiguous business questions into measurable analytical problems and connect model outputs to commercial, operational, or strategic decisions.
• Experience delivering production-ready analytics and ML systems on modern data platforms, with a strong focus on data quality, governance, and reusability.
• Exposure to SAP data landscapes including SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, SAP HANA Cloud, and familiarity with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), AI Core, AI Launchpad, and SAP AI services.
• Ability to operate effectively in an Agentic AI context, contributing to the design, application, and responsible use of AI agents within complex business processes.
• Advanced communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders through clear data narratives and executive-ready insights.
• You proactively leverage AI in everyday workflows, ensuring high-quality outputs through thoughtful context design and system integration.

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 bring together deep AI expertise, strong industry knowledge, and regional understanding to help customers innovate and lead in their markets. We work closely with decision-makers, challenge assumptions with data, and give data scientists room to influence strategy - not just produce analysis. This is a place for people who enjoy building something meaningful. You will thrive here if you are intellectually curious, customer-centric, and energized by the opportunity to drive real-world outcomes 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.