Data Scientist (multiple positions available)

SAP IT Business Systeme • Palo Alto, CA

4d • $174,783 - $206,460 • Hybrid

About The Position

SAP Labs, LLC seeks multiple Data Scientists at its Palo Alto, California location. The role is responsible for developing new machine learning models and optimizing existing models. The Data Scientist supports machine learning research and development teams across AI algorithms, designs and implements novel algorithms for real data, and applies recent research advances to practical problems to create business value. The role also focuses on explainability and ethical integrity, pushing the possibilities of machine learning, and exploring and implementing recent algorithms and approaches.

The Data Scientist collaborates with development teams to ensure model performance and system scalability, understands business problems end to end, supports requirements gathering and coordination of machine learning development, and communicates system relevance and results visually and consistently. The role also involves taking initiative to identify new machine learning use cases and applications. The position follows a hybrid work model and is based at 3410 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, plus five years of progressive post-baccalaureate experience in the job offered or a related occupation; alternatively, a Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in one of those fields plus three years of experience.
• At least two years of experience with heterogeneous knowledge graphs for machine learning use cases.
• At least two years of experience developing graph-based ML models such as GraphSAGE, GAT, or Graph Transformers.
• At least two years of experience with cloud-based ML development platforms such as Azure ML and Databricks.
• At least two years of experience fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) as part of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.
• At least two years of AI/ML research experience, including publishing papers.
• At least one year of experience with legacy supervised learning models, including development and deployment using methods such as XGBoost.
• At least one year of exposure to multi-agent orchestration frameworks and workflows.

Responsibilities

• Support machine learning research and development teams with AI algorithms.
• Design and implement novel machine learning algorithms to process real data.
• Apply recent research breakthroughs to real problems to create business value.
• Ensure explainability and ethical integrity of AI algorithms.
• Explore and implement recent machine learning algorithms and approaches.
• Collaborate continuously with development teams to ensure performance and system scalability.
• Understand business problems from beginning to end and connect them with research insights.
• Support collecting requirements and coordinating machine learning development.
• Communicate the relevance of implemented systems and results in a visual and consistent way.
• Show initiative in exploring new machine learning use cases and applications.

Benefits

• Employee referral program eligibility, subject to the applicable policy and criteria.
• SAP benefits are referenced, but specific benefits are not listed in the posting.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior