Jobs and Careers

Forward Deployed Data Engineering (Chief) Expert

Palo Alto, United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 29 May 2026

💰 $609,200/yr($274,300/yr – $609,200/yr)

About the role

We help the world run better
At SAP, we keep it simple: you bring your best to us, and we'll bring out the best in you. We're builders touching over 20 industries and 80% of global commerce, and we need your unique talents to help shape what's next. The work is challenging – but it matters. You'll find a place where you can be yourself, prioritize your wellbeing, and truly belong. What's in it for you? Constant learning, skill growth, great benefits, and a team that wants you to grow and succeed.

What You’ll Build:

In this role, you define and drive enterprise scale data engineering strategies and architectures that enable business critical analytics, AI, and innovation embedded directly within customer environments and fast-moving delivery teams. You are accountable for the architectural integrity and delivery of high impact data engineering outcomes across complex initiatives, ensuring alignment between technical decisions and strategic business goals. You work closely with customers and combine cloud native software engineering, enterprise data engineering, and production grade AI capabilities to solve complex real world business problems at speed. Acting as a senior technical authority and strategist, you lead the design of scalable, secure, and resilient data architectures across SAP and non SAP landscapes. Your work directly influences SAP’s competitive advantage by ensuring that data assets are reliable, governed, and optimized for enterprise wide use.

In this role, you will:

Define and govern enterprise scale data engineering architectures, standards, and reference designs across platforms and initiatives.

Lead the design and evolution of scalable, secure, and resilient data platforms, pipelines, and frameworks.

Embed directly into customer projects and fast moving cross functional teams to rapidly understand business processes, technical landscapes, and operational challenges.

Act as the escalation point for complex technical challenges, resolving high impact issues and guiding critical architectural decisions.

Drive alignment between business strategy and data engineering roadmaps, anticipating future needs and emerging technologies.

Partner with senior stakeholders, architects, and leadership teams to translate complex technical concepts into clear strategic guidance.

Ensure data engineering solutions meet enterprise requirements for performance, security, governance, and compliance.

Influence long term technology direction by introducing innovative approaches and best practices in data engineering.

Act as a trusted technical advisor to customers and internal stakeholders, clearly communicating architecture decisions, implementation tradeoffs, technical risks, and delivery progress.

What You Bring:

You demonstrate a proactive approach to leveraging AI in everyday workflows, ensuring high‑quality outputs through thoughtful context design and system integration.

Deepest level of professional expertise in data engineering, with broad experience across architectures, platforms, and large-scale data ecosystems.

Proven ability to act as a technical strategist, defining reference architectures, standards, and long-term data engineering roadmaps.

Proven ability to work in an Agentic AI context, shaping and applying AI agents that act autonomously within defined boundaries, collaborate with human stakeholders, and deliver measurable business outcomes in customer-centric environments.