(Senior) AI Research Engineer (f/m/d) for the Research & Innovation Team

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:

Summary:

We are looking for a (Senior) AI Research Engineer with a strong research mindset and a clear builder mentality. This role is for someone who enjoys staying close to the latest AI research, rapidly testing and validating new ideas, and turning promising concepts into robust systems that address real business problems.

You will help envision, research, and build a new generation of autonomous, proactive, and personalized AI business agents capable of pursuing business objectives over extended horizons, orchestrating tools and sub-agents, and operating with a high degree of accuracy, trustworthiness, and reliability.

The role spans technical exploration, rapid prototyping, system design, evaluation, and refinement. It requires strong engineering skills, sound technical judgment, and the ability to work effectively in ambiguous and fast-moving environments where goals and constraints evolve over time. Success in this role depends on being able to identify meaningful advances, test them rigorously, and push them far enough to demonstrate real product potential in enterprise settings.

This role sits at the intersection of research, engineering, and product impact. You will work on advanced AI topics with real customers, real business problems, and a clear path toward product relevance.

The Role:

• Closely follow the latest AI research and technology developments, identify relevant advances, and assess their practical potential for enterprise use cases
• Rapidly prototype and test new methods, architectures, and system patterns against realistic business problems, workflows, and data
• Design and build agentic systems that combine models, tools, memory, orchestration, and evaluation mechanisms into robust end-to-end solutions
• Translate promising concepts into high-quality prototypes and mature them toward product readiness with scalability, reliability, observability, and maintainability in mind
• Define and implement rigorous evaluation and benchmarking approaches to measure quality, reliability, and business usefulness
• Work closely with researchers, engineers, product teams, designers, and customers to refine ideas, validate value, and prepare successful handover into product organizations
• Help shape technical direction in ambiguous, fast-moving problem spaces with evolving goals and constraints

What you bring:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field
• Several years of hands-on engineering experience building advanced AI systems or products
• Strong experience staying current with the latest AI research and translating relevant advances into working prototypes and systems
• Solid experience building or designing agentic systems involving tool use, orchestration, memory, or multi-step execution
• Strong experience defining and implementing evaluation, benchmarking, and testing approaches for AI systems
• Proficiency in modern AI engineering workflows, including experimentation, model integration, system design, and iterative prototyping
• Ability to operate across research and engineering, with strong technical judgment and a clear bias toward execution
• Strong product-oriented mindset and customer focus
• Experience with model training, fine-tuning, or applied data science is a plus
• Proven technology leadership skills
• Excellent team player with strong collaboration and communication skills

Meet the Team:

Research and Innovation is an interdisciplinary team in the Office of the CTO focused on bringing emerging technologies into SAP’s product portfolio. We work across the full innovation lifecycle, from research and applied exploration through prototyping, validation, and handover to product teams.

Our team brings together researchers, engineers, product managers, designers, project managers, and customer engagement managers. We work closely with customers, partners, and product teams to test new ideas against real business problems, realistic data, and enterprise-grade expectations.

Our current focus is on how recent advances in AI, especially agentic AI, can be applied in business environments in ways that are useful, trustworthy, and operationally viable.

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.

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: 451382 | Work Area: Software-Design und Entwicklung | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Berufserfahren | Employment Type: Part-Time, orVollzeit, unbefristet

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