Principal Research Scientist (f/m/d) - Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI

SAP; Garching bei München; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

SAP SE in Germany seeks a Principal Researcher to lead visionary research at the intersection of Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI. You will shape SAP's enterprise AI strategy, steer thought leadership, and drive collaboration with academia and internal teams.

You will publish in top venues, guide a team of scientists and engineers, and translate breakthroughs into practical, scalable solutions for enterprise data and processes.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, AI, physics, mathematics or related
• Substantial publications in Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web; strong network
• Vision for Knowledge Graphs + Generative AI and symbolic reasoning impact
• Extensive KG + LLM experience (neuro-symbolic methods)
• Experience with collaboration between industry and academia
• Hands-on RDF/SPARQL/Neo4j/PyG proficiency required

Responsibilities

• Drive advances at the intersection of Knowledge Graphs and LLMs, including KG construction and alignment at scale
• Combine semantic context from enterprise KG with large-scale data and generative AI methods
• Define the research agenda for a team of scientists and engineers
• Enable academic research by framing real-world problems, frameworks, and datasets
• Stay updated with latest research and benchmark against internal work
• Publish research results at top-tier conferences (ISWC, AAAI, NeurIPS, ICLR, ESWC)
• Contribute to thought leadership in Knowledge Graphs, Neuro-Symbolic AI, and Generative AI
• Collaborate with KG engineering and data teams to align internal work with community best practices
• Develop new academic collaborations and partnerships with top researchers
• Supervise PhD students during internships or academic collaborations

Skills

Knowledge Graphs

Large Language Models

Neuro-symbolic AI

Python

ML frameworks

Education

PhD in CS/AI or related

Tools

RDF

SPARQL

Neo4j

PyG

PyTorch

TensorFlow

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
At SAP's Business AI Research, we are pushing the frontier of combining Knowledge Graphs with Large Language Models to deliver distinctive, trustworthy AI solutions for enterprise customers.
Agentic AI based on Large Language Models is transforming how users interact with their business applications. Still, the understanding of structured and unstructured business data such as data models, business process metadata, and documentation remains limited in pre-trained LLMs, challenging the use of agents at scale and for complex tasks. It is SAP's mission to overcome this challenge within the realm of Business AI. Knowledge Graphs are SAP's key differentiator to address core LLM challenges such as hallucination, compliance, and grounding, while enabling the next generation of agentic AI workflows and the development of foundation models on structured data to deliver distinctive generative AI solutions to our customers. Beyond grounding, Knowledge Graphs provide the semantic backbone for Causal AI and World Models, thus enabling systems that not only retrieve and generate, but reason about cause and effect, simulate business scenarios, and anticipate outcomes.
As a Principal Researcher, you will set the technical vision and research agenda at the intersection of Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI, drive thought leadership, and shape how SAP leverages symbolic knowledge to build more reliable and capable AI systems.

The Role

• Drive technical advances to the combination of Knowledge Graphs and Large Language Models, including novel approaches to KG-construction and alignment at scale, enabling retrieval, reasoning, grounding, and agentic workflows.
• Expand the horizon of what is possible by bringing together rich semantic context from enterprise Knowledge Graphs with large-scale business data and state-of-the-art generative AI methods.
• Define the research agenda for a team of research scientists and engineers working on Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI.
• Enable academic research by providing Business AI-relevant problem statements, frameworks, and datasets.
• Keep the pulse with novel research, providing insights into the latest research findings and making them comparable with internal work.
• Translate applied research breakthroughs into research publications at relevant top-tier conferences (e.g., ISWC, AAAI, NeurIPS, ICLR, ESWC).
• Contribute to thought leadership at the intersection of Knowledge Graphs, Neuro-Symbolic AI, and Generative AI, an area of growing strategic importance for enterprise AI.
• Work closely with the Knowledge Graph engineering and data teams to share knowledge and ensure that internal initiatives and project deliverables are aligned with community best practices.
• Collaborate with established academic partners and define new collaborations with top-tier academic researchers.
• Supervise PhD students during summer internships or as part of academic collaborations.

What you bring

• PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, physics, mathematics or other relevant disciplines
• Proven academic track record in Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web Technologies and the intersection Foundation Models - supported by a substantial record of publications (e.g., ISWC, KDD, ESWC, ICLR, NeurIPS, ), including recent works, and a well-established network in these fields.
• A strong research vision for the combination of Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI, and of how symbolic knowledge and structured reasoning impact the reliability, compliance, and capability of large language models in enterprise settings.
• Extensive research experience with Knowledge Graphs as well as Large Language Models (e.g., neuro-symbolic methods, agentic knowledge engineering).
• Ideally, experience in Causal AI and how it relates to knowledge-grounded reasoning and decision-making.
• Proven experience and deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with collaboration between industrial and academic research.
• Hands‑on experience with RDF, SPARQL, Neo4j, PyG, or similar Knowledge Graph technologies is a prerequisite.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar is a strong plus.
• Ideally, professional experience with the combination of Knowledge Graphs and Large Language Models in an ERP domain.

Meet your team

SAP's AI organization is dedicated to seamlessly infusing AI into all enterprise applications, enabling customers, partners, and developers to enhance business processes and generate remarkable business value. Join our international AI team where innovation thrives, opportunities for personal development abound, and exceptional colleagues collaborate globally.

Bring out your best

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.

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