SAP HANA Distinguished Engineer FAQ

In order to help everyone understand what we're doing with the Distinguished Engineer Program, we have compiled this list of frequently asked questions. If you have an immediate question not addressed here, you can contact the HANA Distinguished Engineer Council members on SCN, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Twitter handles: David Hull , John Appleby , Vijay Vijayasankar ,  Harald Reiter,,Mike Eacrett , Jon Reed.

Q: What is the Distinguished Engineer Program?

A: SAP HANA is the fastest growing product in SAP's history, with over 400 customers after just 12 months, and there will be an unprecedented demand for SAP HANA resources. With this comes the need to understand the level of experience of a HANA Engineer and their areas of expertise. The Distinguished Engineer program is an SAP-sponsored, community-led effort to address this perceived skills gap in the HANA technical community, and to recognize those with a high level of technical skills, as well as embracing those who are learning and are on their way to gaining skills.

Q: What is a Distinguished HANA Engineer?

A: A Distinguished HANA Engineer will be someone with significant hands-on experience with HANA, and a member of the SAP technology community either as a customer, partner, or SAP employee.  There will be several areas in which engineers will be recognized, such as administration, development, modeling, performance architecture, etc. These areas will be more fully fleshed out and documented soon, so stay tuned for that.

Through this program, we will also focus on the creation of quality, freely accessible technical content for those who wish to learn HANA; work with SAP on ways to help the technical community keep up with the rapid pace of change in HANA development; and feed experiences from HANA implementations back to SAP to guide future development of HANA.

Q: Why would I want to become a Distinguished HANA Engineer?

A: Distinguished Engineers will be the recognized as the technical elite in the HANA community. They will have access to regular briefings from SAP and partners on development efforts, roadmaps, use cases, implementation successes, and other information that can help them stay at the top of their game. HANA is a rapidly evolving product, and SAP is committed to working with the Distinguished Engineer community to ensure they keep up with that pace of development.

There will also be rewards, but we can't speak about those yet as they are still being negotiated. But expect free access to select events, and custom stickers, at the very least. :)

Q: Who are the Distinguished Engineers today?

A: The Distinguished Engineer program is just getting started, and there are no official Distinguished Engineers yet. What we do have is a Distinguished Engineer Council that are responsible for setting up the structure of the program, implementing the technical layers to support it, and identifying candidates. This Council is made up of the following:

	John Appleby: John is the Global Head of Business Analytics and Technology for Bluefin Solutions, an SAP partner based in the UK. John is also an SAP Mentor, frequent blogger on issues pertaining to HANA, and has hands-on experience with HANA in lab and customer environments.
	Mike Eacrett: Mike is VP of Product Development for HANA at SAP. He is a regular speaker at SAP events, and is involved in the SAP technology community. He is also responsible for new features in HANA and so is in a prime position to receive feedback from the Distinguished Engineer community and funnel that back into HANA development priorities.
	David Hull: David joined SAP in January of 2012, and is responsible for HANA Marketing within SAP. He is an SAP Mentor, blogger, and has worked for SAP customers supporting their application infrastructure and databases for almost 20 years prior to joining SAP.
	Jon Reed: Jon is an SAP Mentor, Independent analyst and Enterprise Irregular focusing on SAP career skills development, and market trends. He has a wealth of insight into the SAP technology marketplace, what customers are in need of, and the skills gap that exists with HANA.
	Harald Reiter: Harald is an SAP Mentor and Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting. He has hands-on experience at some of the largest HANA implementations, and blogs frequently on HANA and related topics.
	Vijay Vijayasankar: Vijay is Head of SAP Forward Engineering with IBM Global Business Services. In this capacity, he has insight into many customer implementations of HANA, their requirements, challenges, and successes. He is also an SAP Mentor, and active blogger on HANA and related topics.

Q: How can I become a Distinguished Engineer?

A: The qualifications for becoming a Distinguished Engineer are not finalized yet. However, they will include demonstrations of HANA technical expertise, through a variety of possible vehicles, such as successful, referenceable customer implementations first and foremost, but also conference speaking, participation in DemoJams and forum discussions, creation of content such as blogs, articles, podcasts, webcasts, instructional videos, etc. The managing council for the Distinguished Engineer program, along with active Distinguished Engineers once they are inducted, will be responsible for selecting new Distinguished Engineers, based on the quality of their community content.

Q: How can I participate in the Distinguished Engineer Program?

A: As already mentioned, Distinguished Engineers will be selected based on the the quality of their content. So the first way to get involved will be to create and submit content of your own. You should submit content wherever you choose - the SAP Community Network, ExperienceSAPHANA.com, your own personal blog site, etc.

Soon, we hope to be able to leverage a gamification platform that will allow community members to identify and rate quality content, wherever that content exists. Through this platform, all community members will be able to participate to rate content, and through this process, the highest quality content will be made more visible to those responsible for selecting Distinguished Engineers.

So to put it more succinctly, anyone can become involved in this community program, and the community itself will help judge those with the experience and skills required to become a Distinguished HANA Engineer.

Q: What can I expect from the Distinguished Engineers?

A: Distinguished Engineers will be community contributors and technical experts in various areas of HANA technology. As such, they will be responsible for contributing high quality content to the online HANA knowledgebase, as well as participating in technical leadership capacities in events such as conferences, webcasts, and other in-person and virtual events.

Q: Will Distinguished Engineers come from SAP? Will they be officially recognized by SAP?

A: Distinguished Engineers will come from all over the SAP ecosystem, including partners, customers, and even SAP itself. However, the Distinguished Engineer label is not an officially designated SAP branding, but rather a community one.

Q: Where can I go to find more information on the Distinguished Engineers?

A: There will be a website set up in the short term. In the meantime, all of the members of the Distinguished Engineer board are active on twitter, the SAP Community Network, and other places. Feel free to reach out to them in any of these areas, or by commenting here.

Q: Where can I engage with the Distinguished Engineers?

A: When Distinguished Engineers are formally recognized, they will be accessible via the Distinguished Engineer website, or any other of a number of social media outlets, which will be specified at that time.