Principal AI Architect - CTO Industry AI (f / M / D)

SAP SE; Garching bei München; On-site; EUR 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

SAP SE seeks a Principal AI Architect for IndustryAI within the Office of the CTO to drive architectural direction for AI-native platforms and scalable ML infrastructure. You will define reference architectures, ensure guardrails, and mentor engineers while shaping enterprise-grade solutions across SAP products.

You will collaborate with product management, data science, and platform leadership to translate requirements into technically sound designs, with a focus on security, observability, and

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of professional experience in software architecture, platform engineering, or AI/ML systems roles.
• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree a plus.
• Domain fluency in SAP-relevant areas (supply chain, manufacturing, asset management, procurement) is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Define target and reference architectures for AI-native systems and ML platforms.
• Act as a technical authority across BAIP, Industry Product & Engineering, LoB, and FDE for your area.
• Lead specification-driven engineering to decompose problems and ensure CI/CD, MLOps, and responsible AI practices.
• Guide complex initiatives from PoC to enterprise production with LLMs, RAG, and multi-agent systems.
• Standardize reusable architectural patterns and libraries across IndustryAI.

Skills

AI-native architectures

cloud-native infrastructure

distributed systems

ML platforms

MLOps

security architecture

architectural reviews

stakeholder communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

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

The Office of the CTO (oCTO) for IndustryAI sits at the intersection of the SAP Business AI Platform (BAIP), Industry Product & Engineering, the LoB application teams, and FDE engagements with strategic customers. The Architecture team inside oCTO does not own architecture strategy for any single industry or LoB — that lives with the product and engineering organizations. What we own is the AI-native and agentic architecture strategy for IndustryAI: how systems are designed to be secure, scalable, and observable; which patterns get standardized; and how the architectural foundation is built and governed so industry and LoB products can ship AI reliably.

As Principal AI Architect, you lead architectural direction for one or more capability areas end-to-end. You define target and reference architectures for large-scale AI-native and ML platforms, run architectural validation with engineering teams and strategic customers through FDE, and ensure proven designs are standardized into reusable patterns across IndustryAI. You make architectural decisions independently, mentor senior engineers on design choices, and serve as a credible technical partner to product management, data science, and platform leadership. In this role you will:

• Define target and reference architectures for AI-native systems and ML platforms within your capability area — aligned with SAP standards, security requirements, and product objectives.
• Act as a technical authority across BAIP, Industry Product & Engineering, LoB, and FDE for your area — align engineering stakeholders, govern architectural guardrails, and drive adoption through influence rather than reporting lines.
• Lead specification-driven engineering: decompose ambiguous problems into architecturally sound designs, validate decisions against guardrails, and ensure consistent adoption of CI/CD, MLOps, and responsible AI practices.
• Guide complex initiatives from proof-of-concept to enterprise-grade production — integrating LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), multi-agent systems, and knowledge graph platforms into scalable, observable architectures.
• Standardize reusable architectural patterns and libraries across IndustryAI, turning one-off technical solutions from FDE engagements into documented, adoptable reference architectures for engineering teams.
• Contribute concrete architectural requirements to BAIP — orchestration topology, memory and context architecture, inference infrastructure, evaluation harnesses, observability stacks, and guardrails — grounded in what capability areas actually need to ship reliably.
• Oversee architectural reviews within your scope: validate designs before commitment, identify risks early, and ensure compliance with global security, privacy, and data governance requirements.
• Stay current with the external technology landscape — evaluate emerging approaches in agentic AI, semantic retrieval, knowledge graphs, cloud-native MLOps, and distributed systems, and translate that signal into concrete architectural recommendations.
• Mentor senior engineers and development architects on design decisions, specification quality, and the reasoning behind architectural tradeoffs.
• Partner with product management, data science, and platform engineering to translate product objectives into technically sound, measurable system designs with clear SLIs and SLOs.

What you'll bring

• Deep expertise in designing enterprise-scale AI-native architectures: cloud-native infrastructure, distributed systems, ML platforms covering data, feature, training, inference, and evaluation layers.
• Demonstrated ability to define architectural guardrails and govern their adoption across engineering teams working in parallel.
• Hands-on experience architecting and operating mission-critical ML platforms end-to-end — from data ingestion and feature engineering through model deployment, monitoring, and drift detection.
• Deep knowledge of cloud-native MLOps: model registries, feature stores, CI/CD pipelines, observability stacks, canary and blue-green deployments, and infrastructure as code.
• Practical experience integrating LLMs, RAG, and multi-agent systems into enterprise production architectures — including context engineering, semantic retrieval, agentic orchestration, and evaluation harness design.
• Strong security architecture fluency: ability to design for compliance with regulatory and data governance requirements across cloud environments.
• Experience leading architectural reviews, mentoring engineers on design tradeoffs, and communicating architectural reasoning clearly to both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfort with specification-led engineering: the ability to decompose ambiguous problems, write precise architectural specifications, and hold the bar during implementation.
• 7–10 years of professional experience in software architecture, platform engineering, or AI/ML systems roles, preferably in cloud or enterprise SaaS.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline; advanced degree is a plus.
• Domain fluency in one or more SAP-relevant areas (supply chain, manufacturing, asset management, procurement) is a strong plus.

Meet your team

The Office of the CTO for IndustryAI is where SAP's AI strategy comes to life. We connect the SAP Business AI Platform (BAIP) to the industry vertical requirements and LoB applications customers use every day, and we pair that with a Forward Deployed Engineering muscle that ships AI outcomes with strategic customers. The architectural patterns we standardize are grounded in those engagements; the platform we shape exists to make those patterns scale.

The Architecture team inside oCTO owns the AI-native and agentic architecture strategy for IndustryAI — how systems are built to be secure, observable, and scalable; which patterns are standardized; and how the architectural foundation is governed so engineering teams can ship reliably. Architecture for any given industry or product stays with the engineering organizations; our job is to make sure they build on a foundation that is sound, reusable, and meaningfully better between releases.

You will join a small team of AI architects inside oCTO IndustryAI who pair deep technical depth with systems-level thinking and the organizational clarity to influence across engineering boundaries. The team's mandate is architectural excellence at scale: every FDE engagement, every production incident, and every emerging technology evaluation feeds back into reference architectures and guardrails that raise the bar for how IndustryAI builds.

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: Careerssap.

For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for theSAP 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.

Employment Details

Requisition ID: 459916 | Work Area: Software-Design und Entwicklung | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Berufserfahren | Employment Type: Vollzeit, unbefristet | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid