Principal AI Application Engineer - FDE Intelligent Operations
About The Position
The Principal AI Application Engineer will build SAP’s Intelligent Operations capability for Forward Deployed Engineering from the ground up. The role owns the transition framework for moving AI engagements from Value Delivery to Value Operation, defining what must be in place for solutions to be production-ready. The position establishes monitoring, alerting, and incident-response capabilities for deployed AI solutions and designs operations to meet contractual SLAs reliably. It develops production quality assurance for LLM- and agent-based systems, including drift detection, performance benchmarking, guardrail validation, and retraining triggers. The role also establishes security, data-boundary, compliance, and governance practices across customer engagements, and develops scalable operational tooling, automation, partner integration, and self-healing capabilities. Working closely with the Knowledge & IP team, the engineer captures operational learnings and feeds them into the delivery lifecycle. This is a technical leadership role without a management title: the engineer mentors colleagues, sets standards, and builds team capabilities while working globally with FDE squads, hubs, external delivery partners, and customers. The role may require 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 operating AI-native solutions in customer production environments with uptime, data boundaries, and contractual SLAs.
- Ability to identify drift in agentic application behavior before it results in customer escalation.
- Experience in regulated or enterprise-grade environments with compliance, security, and operational governance requirements.
- Ability to translate operational experience into standards, playbooks, and repeatable processes.
- Ability to work across organizational boundaries with delivery squads, engineering and platform teams, customers, and external partners.
- Ability to engage effectively with architects and take responsibility for operating systems after deployment.
Responsibilities
- Define and own the handover framework for transitioning FDE engagements from Value Delivery to Value Operation, including production-readiness criteria.
- Build monitoring, alerting, and incident-response capabilities for deployed AI solutions and ensure contractual SLA commitments are met.
- Establish production quality practices for AI systems, including drift detection, performance benchmarking, guardrail validation, and retraining triggers.
- Set operational best practices for production security, data boundaries, and compliance across customer engagements.
- Establish operational standards and self-healing capabilities with other engineers.
- Design scalable operating models, tooling, automation, and partner integration so operations can support many 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 technical capabilities within the developing team.
- Work across FDE squads, hubs, platform and engineering teams, external delivery partners, and customers as production needs arise.
- Travel up to 20%.
Benefits
- Flexible working models
- Health and well-being support
- Variable incentive opportunities may be provided where applicable, subject to relevant plans and policies
- Additional benefits may be provided where applicable, subject to relevant plans and policies
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
Education Level
No Education Listed
