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

Stellenbeschreibung:

What you’ll do

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

Equal Employment Opportunity

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: