Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Overview

At SAP, we strive to enable global industries and commerce through innovative technology across more than 20 industries worldwide. We foster an inclusive environment that encourages individual growth and learning, ensuring that every team member can thrive and contribute meaningfully.

Role Summary

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will spearhead the creation and deployment of advanced, production-ready machine learning and generative AI solutions addressing challenging business and product demands at scale. Your responsibilities will include managing the full lifecycle of ML systems—covering data pipelines, feature management, training workflows, model serving, online experiments, and system monitoring.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead development of ML applications involving deep learning, natural language processing, ranking, recommendation systems, forecasting, semantic search, and large language model (LLM) technologies.
• Enhance system performance, reliability, latency, and cost-effectiveness in live deployments.
• Guide technical decisions in model selection, distributed training and inference, GPU resource optimization, model compression, prompt and retrieval optimization, drift detection, retraining approaches, and responsible AI governance.
• Mentor engineering team members and transform best practices into scalable platform features.

Qualifications and Experience

• Expert-level Python programming and strong software engineering skills in languages such as Java or Go for building scalable systems.
• Extensive knowledge of machine learning, deep learning, and optimization techniques for structured data, NLP, search, ranking, and recommendation tasks.
• Hands-on experience designing and operating end-to-end ML pipelines including data collection, experimentation, deployment, observability, and ML lifecycle management.
• Proficiency with contemporary ML and LLM frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and scikit-learn, including fine-tuning, evaluation, orchestration, and model serving.
• Practical expertise in building generative AI solutions utilizing embeddings, vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent workflows, prompt engineering, and safety mechanisms.
• Deep understanding of MLOps and platform engineering concepts such as model registries, feature stores, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, experiment tracking, and automated validations.
• Strong architectural skills in distributed systems, event-driven architecture, streaming data, and cloud-native ML platforms with a focus on scalability, reliability, and cost optimization.
• Ability to define and implement evaluation and governance practices including offline benchmarking, online experimentation, hallucination analysis, model risk assessment, and responsible AI approaches.
• 7 to 9+ years of combined software engineering and machine learning industry experience, with a proven history of leading and delivering large-scale AI projects.
• Excellent ability to translate ambiguous business needs into efficient, scalable AI-driven solutions, exhibiting strong product insight.
• Thrives in fast-paced, complex environments demonstrating ownership, strategic vision, and clarity in execution to support long-term platform growth.

Team and Culture

You will join a dynamic team of AI and industry specialists dedicated to creating impactful AI technologies for customers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The team embraces collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence to build reliable, high-performing AI frameworks ready for production challenges.

Company Highlights

SAP serves over 400,000 customers worldwide with cutting-edge enterprise application software and cloud services. We emphasize inclusivity, well-being, ongoing personal development, and strive to create an environment where every employee can succeed and contribute to meaningful technological advancement.

Equal Opportunity and Accessibility

We are committed to equal employment opportunities without regard to age, race, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability. Accommodations are available for applicants with physical or mental disabilities upon request.

Additional Information

Applicants may be subject to background verification. We adhere to ethical AI usage guidelines throughout our recruitment process; violations may result in disqualification.