Chief Development Architect

Job Description

Requisition ID: 451817
Work Area: Software-Design and Development
Expected Travel: 0%
Career Status: Professional
Employment Type: Regular Full Time
Career Level: T5PF-2
Additional Locations:

Original Posting Date: 04/20/26

Job Title: Chief Development Architect

Location: Chicago, IL

Work Model: Hybrid work model

Purpose and Objective:

SAP Labs, LLC seeks a Chief Development Architect at our Chicago, IL location to guide business strategy based on technological advancements.

Expectations and Tasks:

Influence and guide the technology strategies across cloud business and broader SAP. Be a trusted advisor to engineering leadership & align technology vision with their business and technology priorities. Maintain strategic alignment with corporate strategy and external stakeholders such as analysts, customers, partners and vendors. Lead teams across the cloud business using One SAP Mindset. Create a leading brand by speaking at conferences, publishing whitepapers, both internally and externally to SAP. Create a blueprint of tech strategy in collaboration with product & engineering to transform software into a modern services-based architecture. Apply domain driven design principles to create and influence cross enterprise architecture. Balance long term and near-term priorities. Exercise judgment, within broadly defined practices and policies, in selecting methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining solutions. Design and review complex system/solution architecture to ensure a highly performant, highly available secure software product delivery at hyperscale. Prevent and fight significant business-impacting technological fires. Change the norm and lead innovation by influencing up & down and across SAP cloud business. Resolve conflicts between innovation and standardization. Guide teams to critically analyze requirements to do the right thing, not just what they are asked to do. Recruit and interview senior and chief architects. Identify, develop and grow architecture talent across the business group. Build and retain an architect community that engages in cross-domain topics. Arbitrate technology decisions across many architecture domains. Author clear technical documentation and presentations to communicate architecture and design options to educate engineering teams and product managers. Use computer programming languages & tools to prove hypotheses and to model out solutions. Mentor and coach technical & non-technical staff in the field of architecture. Participate / Assist in Sales efforts and/or interact with customers to provide technology guidance. Influence SAP-wide technology standards, guidelines & principles in collaboration with other SAP product teams.

Education and Occupational Experience:

Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field of study and ten (10) years of experience in the job offered or related occupation. Employer will accept pre-bachelor's experience. Alternatively, a Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field of study and eight (8) years of experience in the job offered or related occupation.

Qualifications/Skills and Competencies Experience:

Experience must include five (5) years involving each of the following:

• Software Architecture Design and Communication;
• CI/CD methodologies and tools, including IAC, GitOps, argocd, and helm;
• Performance testing methodologies and tools including Gatling, K6, and Fortio;
• Observability tools and protocols including Prometheus, Grafana, Opensearch, Splunk, and OTEL;
• Docker Container technology and Kubernetes including usage, security, networking orchestration (Gardener project), extension (controllers), and implementation on AWS, Azure, and GCP;
• SAP BTP Runtimes and Services, including Cloud Foundry and Kyma;
• Golang programming language;
• Network Protocols including TCP, TLS, HTTP, and DNS;
• Web technologies including Load balancers, Proxies, and Content Delivery Network;
• Envoy Proxy and Envoy-based API Gateways and Service Meshes (Istio); and
• Collaborating with 3rd-party software providers, contributing to multiple Open-Source projects, and managing commercial vendor relations.

Travel: N/A

This position is eligible for the Employee Referral Program subject to the eligibility criteria outlined in the SAP Internal Employee Referral Policy.

Internal use only: reference code lhrs4262

SAP:SAIL

EX:OUT

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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: The annual base salary range for this position is $210,975 - $358,725. 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 $281,300 - $478,300. 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

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

Additional Locations:

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