AI Development Architect

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 do

You are the technical leader who sets the AI architecture direction and accelerates enterprise-wide adoption of safe, scalable AI systems. You combine deep engineering expertise with strategic influence, working across product, platform, security, data, and business stakeholders. You define reference architectures, drive engineering alignment, and ensure teams can build AI-powered solutions reliably, efficiently, and responsibly.

You remain hands-on and outcomes-oriented, capable of prototyping, evaluating emerging AI technologies, and enabling engineering teams to adopt modern AI development patterns—including LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, semantic data architectures, and model governance frameworks.

You will report to the Head of Business AI Engineering and serve as a principal advisor and accelerator for AI innovation in the SAP SuccessFactors product.

Responsibilities:

• Define and lead the AI architecture strategy, including reference architectures, platform patterns, reusable components, and integration standards.

• Architect agentic systems, tool orchestration, and LLM-driven workflows to support intelligent and autonomous application behaviors.

• Partner with product engineering leaders to embed AI capabilities into core product experiences and foundational platform services.

• Establish AI governance frameworks, covering data lineage, model monitoring, human-in-the-loop controls, auditability, and responsible AI practices.

• Guide the selection and adoption of AI platforms, frameworks, and model providers, balancing performance, cost, compliance, and security.

• Drive engineering productivity improvements through reusable libraries, development environments, and standardized patterns.

• Measure and improve AI cost efficiency, including inference cost modeling and optimization strategies.

• Collaborate with global engineering, T&I, Product, and business leadership to ensure aligned technical decisions and scalable execution.

• AI Community of practice: Lead AI enablement programs—mentoring engineers, training architects, and promoting knowledge-sharing across teams.

• Prototype, validate, and launch reference implementations and accelerator solutions that unlock faster adoption and delivery.

• Communicate architectural direction clearly to executives, engineering teams, and cross-functional stakeholders, enabling decision-making at speed.

• Enterprise AI Enablement: Own the AI Pattern library, ensuring reusable templates for AI across SuccessFactors

• Innovation Pipeline: Awareness, validation and recommendation of emerging AI tools/concepts

• Bridge product vision and technical execution: translating AI use cases, concepts and strategic goals into scalable, governed architectures and actionable engineering plans.

• Stakeholder Enablement: Act as the bridge between research, engineering and product management to translate emerging AI capabilities into business outcomes

• Evangelism: Represent AI architecture direction (across SAP, with a SuccessFactors focus) in executive customer engagements.

• Customer & Field Alignment: Support Product Management in customer discussions and supporting material creation to effectively educate and communicate the field and customer base.

• Metrics and Outcome Definition: Partner with Product Management to define success metrics and ensure the architecture is in place to enable their measurement

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, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability.

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 combined range for this position is 192500 - 365600(USD) USD. 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.

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: 437769 | Work Area: Software-Design and Development | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Professional | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid