Senior Cloud Platform / DevOps Engineer

About the job

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.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Cloud Platform / DevOps Engineer to help shape, build, and operate SAP’s next-generation cloud-native platforms across multi-cloud environments and SAP BTP. You will work as part of a globally distributed engineering team driving platform reliability, automation-first delivery, and AI-enabled operations at scale.

This role combines deep Kubernetes and cloud-native engineering with a strong DevOps and SRE mindset, and a platform-as-a-product orientation: we build internal developer platforms and golden paths that engineering teams across SAP rely on. You will design and implement deployment strategies, evolve CI/CD and GitOps pipelines, define observability standards, and drive automation to reduce toil and improve system reliability.

We are hiring a senior engineer that leads architectural decisions, mentor the team, and act as technical escalation points for production.

Curiosity, ownership, and collaboration are the values that drive us. We’re constantly improving how we work, and we expect every team member to contribute to that culture.

What You’ll Do

• Build, automate, and operate cloud-native platforms across multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and SAP BTP (Kyma, Cloud Foundry);

• Build internal developer platforms and golden paths that reduce cognitive load for engineering teams and enable safe, fast self-service;

• Design and implement deployment strategies (Blue/Green, Canary, Rolling Updates, zero-downtime) for Kubernetes workloads;

• Evolve CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows using technologies such as FluxCD, and GitHub Actions;

• Implement infrastructure as code for provisioning and configuration of platform components;

• Build and operate observability solutions — monitoring, logging, tracing — and contribute to SLI/SLO definition, error-budget tracking, and toil reduction for production systems;

• Use and direct AI tools as a first-class part of your workflow — for example: AI-assisted coding (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) integrated into daily development; agentic automation for incident triage, runbook execution, and routine ops; prompt design and evaluation for production AI-Ops workflows;

• Drive automation initiatives to reduce manual effort, improve reliability, and standardize operational practices;

• Participate in an on-call rotation; troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis, and drive post-incident improvements;

• Partner with product engineering teams to improve platform reliability, deployment models, and operational scalability;

• Strengthen platform and supply-chain security: container image signing and SBOMs (cosign/Sigstore), admission policy (OPA / Kyverno), runtime threat detection (Falco / Sysdig), and Kubernetes hardening.

Expectations

• Many years with a strong Kubernetes focus
• Expert-level: architecture, CNI/CSI, advanced workload management
• Designs and leads complex rollout strategies; owns deployment standards
• Designs and optimizes pipelines; defines GitOps patterns for the team
• Designs IaC architecture; evaluates and selects tooling
• Defines SLIs/SLOs; architects observability strategy across systems
• Directs AI tooling strategy; designs and evaluates agentic and AI-Ops workflows for the team
• SME and escalation point; mentors junior/mid engineers
• Leads architectural decisions; drives cross-functional alignment
• Acts as escalation point; drives reliability and post-incident improvements

What You Bring

Required

• Strong foundation in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience (degree not required)

• Hands-on Kubernetes experience — architecture, networking, storage, security, and operational best practices;

• Experience with CI/CD and GitOps workflows (FluxCD, ArgoCD, or equivalent);

• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tools (Terraform, Crossplane, CloudFormation, or Pulumi);

• Experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP);

• Demonstrated ability to use and direct AI tools (LLMs, AI-assisted coding, AI-Ops tooling) as a core part of day-to-day engineering work;

• Scripting and programming skills (Python, Go, or Bash) for automation and system integration;

• Knowledge of observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/Splunk, Sysdig, or equivalent);

• Familiarity with Kubernetes and container supply-chain security practices (image scanning, signing, admission policies);

• Strong problem-solving skills, ownership mindset, and ability to operate in fast-paced distributed environments;

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; comfort collaborating with globally distributed teams;

• Proven track record architecting and leading complex deployment strategies (Canary, Blue/Green, A/B Testing) at scale;

• Expert-level Kubernetes — CNI, CSI, security hardening, advanced workload management;

• Experience designing and optimizing robust CI/CD pipelines with a focus on automation, reliability, and observability;

• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and leading cross-functional technical initiatives;

• Strong written communication: ability to author and review RFCs, ADRs, and postmortems; able to influence stakeholders without direct authority;

• Familiarity with microservices architecture, event-driven systems, and Linux internals/networking.

Nice to Have

• SAP BTP Kyma and Cloud Foundry operations experience;

• Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD, CKS);

• Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) and advanced traffic management;

• Chaos engineering principles and tooling;

• Familiarity with compliance and governance frameworks;

• Open-source project contributions.

Why Join Us

You will be part of a global platform engineering organization driving large-scale cloud transformation across SAP’s Business Suite and Spend Management portfolio.

This is an opportunity to work on:

• Modern Kubernetes and hyperscaler platforms at SAP scale;

• Internal developer platforms and golden paths used by engineering teams across SAP;

• Automation-first, GitOps-driven platform delivery;

• AI-enabled operations and deployment experiences — at the frontier, not in a pilot;

• SAP BTP engineering and operations across Kyma and Cloud Foundry;

• Highly scalable enterprise SaaS systems used by millions of users globally.