We are a global leader in data and AI. Through our software and services, we empower customers worldwide to transform data into intelligence—and questions into answers.

If you’re seeking a dynamic, rewarding career with flexibility and a world-class employee experience, you’ll find it here. We’re consistently recognized for our inclusive, purpose-driven culture and innovative technologies by organizations such as Fast Company, Forbes, Newsweek, and others.

About the Role

This role is based at the SAS R&D Center in Pune and is part of the SAS Foundation team. We are seeking a Software Development Manager to lead the development, quality, security, and maintenance of our Natural Language Processing (NLP) solutions.

In this role, you will own the planning, prioritization, design, and delivery of SAS NLP products while ensuring high standards of scalability, reliability, and security. You’ll work with a collaborative, experienced team to build and maintain industry-leading NLP solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of NLP developers and testers.
• Oversee the development of NLP models for tasks such as text classification, entity recognition, search, summarization, sentiment analysis, and AI agents.
• Review model design, code quality, and experimentation practices.
• Plan, prioritize, and allocate resources to deliver high-quality, scalable, and testable software within established timelines, following R&D best practices.
• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into scalable NLP solutions.
• Drive best practices in model evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Ensure production readiness, performance, and scalability of NLP systems.
• Stay up to date with advancements in NLP, LLMs, and AI research, and guide adoption where relevant.
• Lead solution design and enforce technical standards to ensure consistent behavior across supported environments.
• Manage project scoping, scheduling, and execution; track progress and proactively communicate risks and concerns to stakeholders and leadership.
• Organize and prioritize resources to address enhancements, redesigns, and defect resolution.
• Ensure compliance with all applicable security policies and secure software development practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, or a related field
• 12+ years of overall experience, including:
• At least 5 years of hands-on experience with C/C++ and Python
• 5+ years of experience in NLP / Machine Learning roles ( good to have)
• At least 3 years in a project lead, supervisory, or management role
• Proven ability to work with senior leadership to define, prioritize, and assign project objectives.
• Experience mentoring, training, and managing day-to-day team activities.
• Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.
• Experience with Agile software development methodologies and practices.
• Strong understanding of software development processes and quality standards.
• Proven experience in talent acquisition, coaching, development, and succession planning, fostering a culture of trust and engagement.
• Demonstrated ability to manage escalations and consistently deliver high-quality software on schedule.
• Strong attention to detail while maintaining a clear understanding of the broader business context.
• Proven ability to collaborate across teams to achieve shared objectives.

Technical & Leadership Skills

• Strong experience designing and developing C/C++ and Python APIs.
• Hands-on experience with transformer-based models (e.g., BERT, GPT, T5, LLaMA)
• Proficiency in Python and common ML/NLP frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, spaCy)
• Strong expertise in NLP techniques such as classification, text clustering, sentiment analysis, entity extraction, parsing, machine learning, deep learning, LLM and Agentic AI.
• Background in search, recommender systems, or speech recognition is a plus
• Capability to identify technical gaps and drive continuous improvement.
• Experience researching, evaluating, and testing new technologies.
• Strong analytical skills to evaluate complex information, develop clear recommendations, and present findings effectively.
• Creative problem-solving skills with strong judgment and decision-making ability.
• Ability to communicate with global peers and management in a clear and effective way.
• Ability to evaluate complex information, develop clear recommendations, and effectively present findings while seeking feedback.
• Provide technical leadership as appropriate for projects and to the team through mentoring, training and managing the activities of the team.

You are welcome here.

At SAS, it’s not about fitting into our culture – it’s about adding to it. We believe our people make the difference. Our inclusive workforce brings together unique talents and inspires teams to create amazing software that reflects the diversity of our users and customers. 

Additional Information:

Please insert appropriate compliance verbiage for your country.

SAS only sends emails from verified “sas.com” email addresses and never asks for sensitive, personal information or money. If you have any doubts about the authenticity of any type of communication from, or on behalf of SAS, please contact Recruitingsupport@sas.com.

Let's stay in touch! Join our Talent Community to stay up to date on company news, job updates and more.

#SAS