PhD Student (f/m/d) - Business AI Research

We help the world run better

At SAP, we enable you to bring out your best. Our company culture is focused on collaboration and a shared passion to help the world run better. How? We focus every day on building the foundation for tomorrow and creating a workplace that embraces differences, values flexibility, and is aligned to our purpose-driven and future-focused work. We offer a highly collaborative, caring team environment with a strong focus on learning and development, recognition for your individual contributions, and a variety of benefit options for you to choose from. 

What you’ll do

• As a PhD Intern you will work with a team of experienced researchers and data scientists taking on challenges posed by the SAP customers and product units and providing smart services across and beyond the SAP portfolio. You will have the chance to work with large amounts of real-world data containing the full codebase of SAP systems
• Collaborate with the ABAP foundation model team to work and improve upon code assistance models targeting use-cases like code completion, code explanation, unit test generation, code migration, and several others
• Perform state of the art research to advance Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
• Choose from different focus topics: Utilizing external feedback signals (such as unit tests, static code checks) both at training and inference time; agentic workflows to handle complex user scenarios such as unit test generation; exploit structural information from the codebase, such as ASTs or data flow analysis, to utilize either directly in the model architecture or in other parts of the workflow (e.g. context injection)
• Publish research results and contribute to research that can be applied to SAP product development. Support in a hands-on fashion the integration of your results into our product
• Collaborate with academic researchers and cross-functional partners including communicating research plans, progress, and results

What you bring

• You are a PhD student (f/m/d) at least in your second year or PostDocs, specializing in a related research area
• Experience with a strong foundation in machine learning, including building systems utilizing deep learning, natural language processing, LLMs, Foundation Models, or Knowledge Graphs
• A strong publication record in recognized ML/NLP conferences or journals such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS
• Proficient in PyTorch, Python, and HuggingFace Transformers, with a good understanding of statistical analysis and shell programming. Experience with distributed training, especially NVIDIA NeMo, is a plus
• Must be fluent in English

The duration of the internship is at least 4 months but ideally 6 months and should take place in 2025.

Meet your team 

SAP's AI organization is dedicated to seamlessly infusing AI into all enterprise applications, enabling customers, partners, and developers to enhance business processes and generate remarkable business value. Leveraging the cutting-edge developments in AI research along with SAP’s unparalleled enterprise data assets offers a distinctive opportunity to explore an uncharted domain within AI research. As a vital part of this organization, our team is dedicated to pioneering transformative advancements in high-value domains, including Foundation Models for structured data and the development of comprehensive grounding for widespread SAP applications through Knowledge Graphs.

Please keep in mind that the hiring for PhD candidates at SAP demands a previous approval by the university as well as the supervising professor. 

Your set of application documents should contain a cover letter, a resume in table form, school leaving certificates, certificate of enrollment, current university transcript of records, copies of any academic degrees already earned, and if available, references from former employers (including internships). Please also describe your experience and skills in foreign languages and computer programs / programming languages. 

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Bring out your best

SAP innovations help more than four hundred thousand customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with two hundred million users and more than one hundred thousand employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, you can bring out your best.  

We win with inclusion

SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better and more equitable world.
SAP is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provide accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: Careers@sap.com.
For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for the SAP Employee Referral Program, according to the eligibility rules set in the SAP Referral Policy. Specific conditions may apply for roles in Vocational Training.

Requisition ID: 412533  | Work Area: Software-Development Operations  | Expected Travel: 0 - 10%  | Career Status: Graduate  | Employment Type: Limited Full Time   | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid