PhD Student for Security and Applied Cryptography
Date: Jun 30, 2026
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
Company: automation-1
Ref-Code: DE-60363251-EN-15-003
Work area: Software - Design and Development
Expected travel: 0% - 10%
Career status:
Employment type: Limited Full Time
COMPANY DESCRIPTION
SAP is the global market leader for business software and thus contributes a considerable part of the world's economic power grid. At SAP you get your chance to put your ideas into action with maximum impact.Customers rely on SAP delivering trustworthy secure products. Therefore SAP has to research on the current trends in software security as well as to educate the development organizations accordingly. The organization "Security Research, Product Security and M&A" has the responsibility to prepare SAP's future of secure products with its research teams and drive product security within SAP product development. The Security Research is based on co-innovation through collaborative research with leading universities, partners, customers, and SAP product groups. Within the Security Research group we look for several motivated PhD students to work with us on applied cryptography. The research work will address:
- Encrypted computation in the cloud
- Database security in the cloud
- Property-preserving encryption
- Secure (multi-party) computation
- System projects in compilers and databases
- Applications in SAP business units
EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS
- You will have the chance to work with internationally leading research experts on state of the art security topics leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree
- We expect you to research, invent and evaluate new security technologies with us, help us implement and validate research results as well as document our findings
- You should have strong analytic skills, programming experience, an attitude to identify research problems, solve them and communicate your research SAP internally and externally in the academic community
- Ideally you have a background in IT Security, in particular in applied cryptography. You should know programming languages such as Java / C++ and demonstrate knowledge of database and compiler technologies
WORK EXPERIENCE
We do not expect you to have any major prior work experience though this may of course be beneficial. If you have made experiences as a working student or even as a young professional please mention this in your application. We expect you to integrate in a research team delivering world-class research while at the same time demonstrating the applicability of the research results in SAP's product portfolio.
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATION / SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES
Required skills:
- Completed MSc or equivalent degree in Computer Science
- Technical knowledge about IT Security, Algorithms & Data Structures
- JAVA / C++
- Knowledge of database and compiler technology
- Good communication & writing skills
- Team Player, flexible & dedicated Preferred skills:
- Fluent English and German
- Knowledge in applied cryptography
Work area: Software - Design and Development
Expected travel: 0% - 10%
Career status:
Employment type: Limited Full Time
COMPANY DESCRIPTION
SAP is the global market leader for business software and thus contributes a considerable part of the world's economic power grid. At SAP you get your chance to put your ideas into action with maximum impact.Customers rely on SAP delivering trustworthy secure products. Therefore SAP has to research on the current trends in software security as well as to educate the development organizations accordingly. The organization "Security Research, Product Security and M&A" has the responsibility to prepare SAP's future of secure products with its research teams and drive product security within SAP product development. The Security Research is based on co-innovation through collaborative research with leading universities, partners, customers, and SAP product groups. Within the Security Research group we look for several motivated PhD students to work with us on applied cryptography. The research work will address:
- Encrypted computation in the cloud
- Database security in the cloud
- Property-preserving encryption
- Secure (multi-party) computation
- System projects in compilers and databases
- Applications in SAP business units
EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS
- You will have the chance to work with internationally leading research experts on state of the art security topics leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree
- We expect you to research, invent and evaluate new security technologies with us, help us implement and validate research results as well as document our findings
- You should have strong analytic skills, programming experience, an attitude to identify research problems, solve them and communicate your research SAP internally and externally in the academic community
- Ideally you have a background in IT Security, in particular in applied cryptography. You should know programming languages such as Java / C++ and demonstrate knowledge of database and compiler technologies
WORK EXPERIENCE
We do not expect you to have any major prior work experience though this may of course be beneficial. If you have made experiences as a working student or even as a young professional please mention this in your application. We expect you to integrate in a research team delivering world-class research while at the same time demonstrating the applicability of the research results in SAP's product portfolio.
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATION / SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES
Required skills:
- Completed MSc or equivalent degree in Computer Science
- Technical knowledge about IT Security, Algorithms & Data Structures
- JAVA / C++
- Knowledge of database and compiler technology
- Good communication & writing skills
- Team Player, flexible & dedicated Preferred skills:
- Fluent English and German
- Knowledge in applied cryptography