Development Expert

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.

Job Title: Development Expert (Principal Software Engineer) – Java Full Stack Development

Location: Devanahalli, Bangalore North

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer (Development Expert) with deep Java/J2EE expertise to join the SuccessFactors Application Engineering team. You will architect, build, and optimize cloud-scale, multi-tenant services and robust APIs that power SAP SuccessFactors. This role is hands-on and high-impact, focusing on modern Java platforms, performance, security, and reliability for enterprise SaaS. You will also help evolve next‑generation frameworks and automation, with opportunities to incorporate AI-assisted development.

What you'll build

• Design and deliver cloud-native, multi-tenant Java services using Spring Boot including REST/OData APIs, data access layers, and integration components.
• Collaborate with Senior and Central Architects to ensure designs meet functional and non-functional requirements, emphasizing security, scalability, performance, maintainability, and observability.
• Own end-to-end engineering: solution design, implementation, code reviews, testing, deployment, and production operations.
• Implement robust database models and access patterns using JPA/Hibernate; tune SQL and queries; manage schema changes using migration tools.
• Build event-driven and batch processing components using Kafka; apply resiliency patterns (circuit breakers, retries, backoff).
• Improve system reliability and performance via JVM and GC tuning, profiling, concurrency best practices, and efficient resource utilization.
• Establish and evolve CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins/GitHub Actions), automated testing (JUnit/Mockito), code quality gates, and infrastructure-as-code where applicable.
• Promote a culture of engineering excellence: mentorship, design reviews, technical documentation, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute substantially to the technical roadmap and platform modernization initiatives.
• Leverage AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) to increase developer productivity and code quality where appropriate.
• Design and implement MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations to enable secure, standardized model-to-system tooling:
• Build MCP-compliant servers and tools in Java to expose enterprise capabilities and data safely to AI agents and assistants.
• Collaborate with AI/ML teams to operationalize MCP-based workflows in production, aligning with security, compliance, and scalability requirements.

What you bring

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; 12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 12–14 years of hands-on Java/J2EE development, with strong mastery of Java 11/17+, collections, streams, generics, and concurrency.
• Expert in Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security) and/or Jakarta EE (JAX-RS, CDI, JPA); strong REST/ OData API design skills.
• Proven experience building and operating large-scale, distributed, monolith and microservices-based systems in production.
• Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and distributed computing.
• Proficient with RDBMS (Hana, PostgreSQL or MySQL), advanced SQL, query optimization, indexing, and schema design; experience with migration scripts.
• Experience with messaging (Kafka), caching (Redis) and one NoSQL store (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra).
• Cloud experience with AWS, Azure, or SAP BTP; containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Excellent debugging and performance tuning skills (profilers, heap/thread dumps, JVM/GC tuning).
• Solid understanding of security best practices (OAuth2, JWT, secure coding, secrets management).
• Strong collaboration and leadership skills; able to mentor peers and lead by example.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted coding tools like GitHub Copilot is a plus.
• Experience with MCP, agent/tooling frameworks, or secure model integrations is a plus.

Nice to have

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architectures, SLOs/SLIs, and SRE practices.
• Experience modernizing monoliths to microservices and domain-driven design.
• Familiarity with SAP technologies and SAP BTP is a plus, but not required.

Where you belong (Meet your team)

SAP SuccessFactors is a premier cloud-based HCM suite serving millions of users globally. Join a business application-focused engineering team that values craftsmanship, performance, and reliability. You'll work in a collaborative environment that encourages innovation, automation, and continuous learning. Your contributions will directly influence enterprise-grade applications and services used worldwide, with opportunities to shape modern engineering practices and thoughtfully integrate AI-assisted development.

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:

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.

EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability:

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability.

Successful candidates might be required to undergo a background verification with an external vendor.

Requisition ID: | Work Area: Software-Design and Development | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Professional | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid.