PhD Student Intern - AI Research

Overview

SAP is committed to helping the world run better. We seek talented individuals who bring their best to us and help shape what’s next. We are builders operating across more than 20 industries and 80% of global commerce. The work is challenging and meaningful, and we value wellbeing, belonging, and continuous growth.

What you’ll do

• As a PhD Intern, collaborate with a team of experienced researchers and applied scientists to tackle challenges informed by scaling AI methods across SAP’s broad portfolio.
• Conduct state-of-the-art research on AI agent improvement, including reinforcement learning approaches that leverage structured feedback from recurring failures to enable continuous learning and adaptation across diverse enterprise environments.
• Learn about exciting research and applications within and outside your expertise, contributing to SAP product development.
• Publish research results in top-tier conferences at the end of the internship and contribute to SAP product development.

What you bring

• PhD student (second year or beyond) with at least one first-author publication or preprint.
• Specialization in Reinforcement Learning and LLM agent research.
• Excellent understanding of deep learning, transformer architectures, optimization methods, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning approaches.
• Strong publication record in top-tier ML/NLP conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR) is preferred.
• Solid background in machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, or reinforcement learning.
• Strong algorithmic problem-solving skills.
• Proficient in PyTorch and Python with a good understanding of statistical analysis and shell programming.

The duration of the internship is 6 months and should take place in 2026.

Meet your team

SAP's AI organization is dedicated to infusing AI into enterprise applications, enabling customers, partners, and developers to enhance business processes and generate value. The team focuses on advancing AI research and building an end-to-end framework for agent evaluation and improvement across diverse business processes.

About SAP and our culture

SAP innovations help customers worldwide operate more efficiently and derive insights from business data. As a cloud company with a large global workforce, SAP emphasizes inclusion, wellbeing, collaboration, and personal development. We strive to empower every employee to bring their best and to grow within a supportive, purpose-driven environment.

Equal Employment Opportunity & Accessibility

SAP is committed to equal employment opportunity and provides accessibility accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If you need accommodations to navigate our website or complete your application, please contact Recruiting Operations Team at Careers@sap.com.

All qualified applicants will be considered without regard to age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, etc.), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability, in compliance with applicable laws. Background verification may be required for successful candidates.

Additional information

AI Usage in the Recruitment Process: Guidelines for Ethical Usage of AI in the Recruiting Process apply. Violations may result in disqualification.

Requisition ID: 450850 | Work Area: Administration | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Student | Employment Type: Limited Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid