Principal AI Application Engineer - FDE Intelligent Operations

SAP Careers•New York, NY

1d•$176,300 - $374,300

About The Position

The Principal AI Application Engineer will build SAP’s Intelligent Operations capability for Forward Deployed Engineering, defining how deployed AI solutions transition from delivery into ongoing production operations. The role owns the production handover framework and establishes monitoring, alerting, incident response, AI quality assurance, operational governance, and scalable operational practices across customer engagements. The engineer will support production reliability and contractual SLAs for deployed LLM- and agent-based solutions, including drift detection, performance benchmarking, guardrail validation, retraining triggers, security, data boundaries, compliance, and self-healing capabilities. The role also develops tooling, automation, and partner integration so operational practices can scale across customer engagements, and works with the Knowledge & IP team to feed operational learnings back into the delivery lifecycle. This is a technical leadership role without a management title. The successful candidate will mentor engineers, establish operational standards, and help build the team’s technical capabilities. Work spans global FDE squads and hubs, external delivery partners, and customers when production needs require it. The role requires up to 20% travel.

Requirements

Hands-on experience with LLM-based systems, agentic workflows, and distributed architectures.
Deep experience in observability, incident management, and production reliability across cloud environments.
Experience identifying drift in agentic application behavior before it causes customer escalation.
Experience in regulated or enterprise-grade environments involving compliance, security posture, and operational governance.
Ability to turn operational experience into standards, playbooks, and repeatable processes.
Ability to work across delivery squads, engineering and platform teams, customers, and external partners.
Ability to engage effectively with architects and take responsibility for operating systems built by other teams.

Responsibilities

Define and own the handover framework for transitioning FDE engagements from Value Delivery to Value Operation, including production-readiness requirements.
Build monitoring, alerting, and incident-response capabilities for deployed AI solutions and ensure contractual SLA commitments are met.
Establish production AI quality practices, including drift detection, performance benchmarking, guardrail validation, and retraining triggers.
Establish operational best practices for production security, data boundaries, and compliance across customer engagements.
Work with engineers to maintain enterprise standards after deployment and establish self-healing capabilities.
Design scalable operational models, tooling, automation, and partner integration for customer engagements.
Capture operational learnings with the Knowledge & IP team and feed them back into the delivery lifecycle.
Mentor engineers, set operational standards, and build the technical capabilities of the emerging team.
Collaborate globally with FDE squads and hubs, external delivery partners, and customers when production demands it.