Forward Deployed Data Engineering (Chief) Expert

Job Description

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.

What You’ll Build:

In this role, you define and drive enterprise scale data engineering strategies and architectures that enable business critical analytics, AI, and innovation embedded directly within customer environments and fast-moving delivery teams. You are accountable for the architectural integrity and delivery of high impact data engineering outcomes across complex initiatives, ensuring alignment between technical decisions and strategic business goals. You work closely with customers and combine cloud native software engineering, enterprise data engineering, and production grade AI capabilities to solve complex real world business problems at speed. Acting as a senior technical authority and strategist, you lead the design of scalable, secure, and resilient data architectures across SAP and non SAP landscapes. Your work directly influences SAP’s competitive advantage by ensuring that data assets are reliable, governed, and optimized for enterprise wide use.

In this role, you will:

• Define and govern enterprise scale data engineering architectures, standards, and reference designs across platforms and initiatives.

• Lead the design and evolution of scalable, secure, and resilient data platforms, pipelines, and frameworks.

• Embed directly into customer projects and fast moving cross functional teams to rapidly understand business processes, technical landscapes, and operational challenges.

• Act as the escalation point for complex technical challenges, resolving high impact issues and guiding critical architectural decisions.

• Drive alignment between business strategy and data engineering roadmaps, anticipating future needs and emerging technologies.

• Partner with senior stakeholders, architects, and leadership teams to translate complex technical concepts into clear strategic guidance.

• Ensure data engineering solutions meet enterprise requirements for performance, security, governance, and compliance.

• Influence long term technology direction by introducing innovative approaches and best practices in data engineering.

• Act as a trusted technical advisor to customers and internal stakeholders, clearly communicating architecture decisions, implementation tradeoffs, technical risks, and delivery progress.

What You Bring:

• You demonstrate a proactive approach to leveraging AI in everyday workflows, ensuring high‑quality outputs through thoughtful context design and system integration.

• Deepest level of professional expertise in data engineering, with broad experience across architectures, platforms, and large-scale data ecosystems.

• Proven ability to act as a technical strategist, defining reference architectures, standards, and long-term data engineering roadmaps.

• Proven ability to work in an Agentic AI context, shaping and applying AI agents that act autonomously within defined boundaries, collaborate with human stakeholders, and deliver measurable business outcomes in customer-centric environments.

• Preferably have project experience in asset-centric industries (e.g., oil & gas, utility, transportation, mill, mining).

• Strong track record of delivering complex, innovative, and business-critical programs spanning multiple teams or initiatives.

• Advanced capability in data architecture, data governance, security, and privacy within enterprise environments.

• Ability to influence and advise senior stakeholders and executives on high-impact technical and strategic decisions.

• Recognition as a thought leader or "go-to" expert in data engineering, contributing to knowledge sharing and best practices internally and externally.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, enabling alignment across diverse, cross-functional teams.

• Architect and optimize scalable end-to-end data pipelines and ETL/ELT frameworks

• Lead enterprise-wide data modelling, orchestration, and cross-platform integration initiatives

• Leverage advanced Python and SQL expertise for high-performance data engineering solutions

• Design and implement distributed data processing solutions using PySpark and Databricks

• Drive workflow automation and orchestration using Airflow and enterprise scheduling platforms

• Deliver enterprise data solutions leveraging SAP HANA and modern data platform architectures

• Implement lakehouse architectures using Parquet, Delta Lake, and related storage technologies

• Build and optimize real-time streaming pipelines using Kafka and event-driven architectures

• Ensure enterprise-grade data quality, governance, compliance, and PII protection standards

• Apply DevOps best practices including CI/CD, Docker, and Git for scalable data engineering delivery

Where You Belong:

You will be part of a growing AI and industry expert team dedicated to serving customers across the region (Americas, Europe, 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 working together to turn complex business challenges into practical, scalable solutions. You will find an environment that values curiosity, ownership, and continuous learning, where new ideas are encouraged and real-world impact matters. This is a place for people who enjoy building something new. You will thrive here if you are customer-centric, motivated by meaningful outcomes, and comfortable navigating ambiguity in a fast-evolving AI landscape.

We work closely with decision-makers, challenge assumptions with data, and give data scientists room to influence strategy—not just produce analysis. We value sharp thinking, business curiosity, and clear communication.

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.

Compensation Range Transparency: SAP believes the value of pay transparency contributes towards an honest and supportive culture and is a significant step toward demonstrating SAP’s commitment to pay equity. SAP provides the annualized compensation range inclusive of base salary and variable incentive target for the career level applicable to the posted role. The targeted annual combined range for this position is 274300-609200USD. The actual amount to be offered to the successful candidate will be within that range, dependent upon the key aspects of each case which may include education, skills, experience, scope of the role, location, etc. as determined through the selection process. Any SAP variable incentive includes a targeted dollar amount and any actual payout amount is dependent on company and personal performance. Please reference this link for a summary of SAP benefits and eligibility requirements: SAP North America Benefits.

We are ethical and compliant
Our leadership credo: Do what’s right. Make SAP better for generations to come. We believe that great leadership extends far beyond the mere pursuit of business goals. We value and foster leadership that is driven with purpose and integrity. Our leaders are role models who uphold SAP’s values and shape SAP’s culture of integrity, by demonstrating and championing ethical and compliant behavior towards all stakeholders.

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: 454036 | Work Area: Software-Design and Development | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Executive | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid

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