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There has been a lot of noise in the SAP market this year. 

AI, Joule, Agents, Autonomous Enterprise, S/4HANA, Clean Core, BTP, and of course, the looming 2027 deadline. 

If you spend enough time recruiting SAP professionals, you get used to the hype. Every few years there's a new "game changer" and a new reason why everything is apparently about to change forever. 

But here's my view from the recruitment side: 

AI isn't killing SAP recruitment; it's making good SAP people harder to find and more valuable. 

SAP is betting heavily on AI 

Let's start with the obvious: SAP has made it clear that AI is central to its future. 

At Sapphire 2026, SAP unveiled its vision of the "Autonomous Enterprise", bringing together SAP Business AI, SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP Business Data Cloud into a more unified platform for deploying AI agents across business processes, and Joule is at the centre of that strategy. 

SAP describes Joule as a collection of AI assistants and agents designed to understand business context, automate workflows and execute tasks across the enterprise. In July, SAP announced further Business AI developments, continuing to expand the role of Joule across its cloud portfolio. 

On paper, this sounds like a technology story when in fact it’s a talent story. Because every time the technology changes, the skills businesses need change with it. 

SAP is changing the people it hires 

One of the biggest SAP stories of July wasn't about a product - it was about people. 

SAP tightened hiring and spending as it redirected investment towards AI, with reports that new hiring would focus primarily on selected AI-related roles. And when one of the world's largest enterprise software companies starts reshaping its workforce around AI, the rest of the SAP ecosystem should probably pay attention. 

But I don't think the takeaway is "Traditional SAP skills are dead." That's lazy analysis. The takeaway here is that the value of SAP skills are becoming much more dependent on how those skills connect to the wider technology landscape. 

A great FICO consultant doesn't suddenly become irrelevant because Joule exists. But a great FICO consultant who understands S/4HANA, automation, data, AI and the underlying business process is a different proposition entirely. 

And that's the person our clients want to talk to. 

Here's the bit the AI headlines miss 

For all the talk about AI, there's the rather large elephant still sitting in the room: S/4HANA. Businesses still need to migrate, clean up their data, redesign processes, deal with custom code, they still need integration, they still need testing, they still need change management… 

And they still need people who have done it before. 

A recent analysis made this point rather well: despite SAP's enormous focus on AI, S/4HANA continues to dominate hiring discussions, with experienced architects and clean core specialists remaining difficult to find. And this is exactly what we're seeing. 

2027 isn't a future problem anymore 

This is the part I think businesses need to take seriously. We've talked about the 2027 ECC maintenance deadline for years and it has become almost background noise. 

But we're now in 2026. 

If an organisation hasn't made significant progress towards its S/4HANA strategy, they're looking at a very real delivery problem, and that has consequences for recruitment. You can't simply decide in October that you need 25 experienced S/4HANA consultants and expect them to appear. They don't. The market for genuinely experienced delivery professionals is already competitive, and the closer we get to 2027, the more organisations will be fishing in the same pond. 

Analysis of the S/4HANA migration market highlight the potential talent crunch created by the volume of programmes still needing to be delivered before the deadline. This is where recruitment gets interesting because the shortage isn't necessarily: “There aren't enough SAP consultants.” It's: “There aren't enough SAP consultants with the exact experience we need, who are available when we need them, and who can actually deliver”, which a very different problem. 

Stop focusing on years of SAP experience  

This is where I'll probably annoy a few people, but after years of recruiting SAP professionals, I don't think years of experience is a particularly good measure of someone's value. 

Someone having 15 years of SAP experience tells me almost nothing. What did they actually do? 

Did they implement? 

Did they transform? 

Did they rescue a failing programme? 

Did they work globally? 

Did they deal with a messy ECC landscape? 

Have they delivered S/4HANA? 

Have they worked with BTP? 

Have they dealt with integration? 

Have they operated in a genuinely complex business? 

Have they sat in front of a difficult stakeholder and changed their mind? 

There's a huge difference between having 15 years in SAP and having 15 years of relevant, valuable experience, and that distinction is going to become increasingly important. 

The SAP professional of 2030 won't look like the SAP professional of 2020 

This is where I think candidates need to be honest with themselves. You don't need to become an AI developer, or abandon your functional specialism, and you don't need to collect every certification SAP releases. But you do need to understand where the market is going. 

If you're a FICO consultant, understand what AI means for finance. 

If you're an MM consultant, understand automation and intelligent procurement. 

If you're an ABAP developer, understand ABAP Cloud and Clean Core. 

If you're an architect, understand BTP, integration, data and AI. 

If you're a programme manager, understand how these technologies change transformation programmes. 

Your core SAP expertise is still your foundation, but that foundation isn't enough anymore. 

Clean core isn't exciting, but it matters 

Here's another unpopular opinion: everyone wants to talk about AI, but nobody wants to talk about technical debt. I'd argue clean core is one of the most important conversations happening in SAP right now because you can't build an intelligent, flexible cloud ERP environment on top of years of uncontrolled customisation and poor architecture. 

AI doesn't magically fix a messy SAP landscape. In some cases, it makes the consequences of that mess more obvious. 

That's why skills around: 

• ABAP Cloud 
• SAP BTP 
• Integration 
• APIs 
• Architecture 
• Data 
• Extensibility 
• Legacy remediation 

are becoming increasingly valuable. 

And we're particularly interested in people who understand both sides of the fence. People who understand why the old environment was built the way it was and also understand where SAP is going next are gold dust. 

AI will replace some SAP work 

Let's not pretend otherwise. Some tasks will disappear, some development work will become dramatically faster, testing and documentation will be automated, analysis will be handled by machines, and junior-level work will undoubtedly change.  

But I don't believe that AI is going to replace great SAP consultants because SAP transformation isn't just about technology. 

It's about decisions. 

It's about trade-offs. 

It's about getting 5,000 employees to adopt a new process and convincing a CFO that the design is right. 

It's about telling a programme director that their plan isn't going to work. 

It's about knowing when the textbook answer isn't the right answer. 

And it's about having the experience to recognise a problem before it becomes a disaster. 

AI can help with those things, but it doesn't remove the need for human judgement. If anything, I think it makes that judgement more valuable. 

The biggest mistake employers are making 

We're seeing organisations become incredibly specific about job descriptions. They want “S/4HANA + FICO + BTP + AI + 15 years' experience + industry experience + global rollout experience + leadership + immediate availability.” 

And they'd like them by Tuesday. 

That's not recruitment, that's wishful thinking. The best hiring processes never start with: "Give me someone who has everything." They start with: “What problem are we actually trying to solve?” 

Then we work backwards: 

• What absolutely must they know? 
• What can they learn? 
• What's genuinely non-negotiable? 
• And what have we simply put on the job description because someone else did? 

That distinction can completely change the quality of the candidate pool. 

And candidates need to change too 

The same applies on the other side. If you're an SAP professional and you're sitting comfortably because you've got 15 years of experience, I'd encourage you to look at the market honestly. 

Ask yourself: 

Am I learning? 

Am I keeping up with S/4HANA? 

Do I understand AI? 

Do I understand BTP? 

Do I understand Clean Core? 

Can I explain the business value of what I do? 

Would I be employable if my current employer disappeared tomorrow? 

This is not meant to scare anyone! It's actually good news because the people who invest in themselves now are going to be incredibly well positioned. 

So where does this leave us? 

From where I sit, the SAP market isn't becoming less human. It's becoming more discerning. 

The days of throwing a keyword-heavy CV at a recruiter and expecting a conversation are disappearing. Clients want evidence, candidates want meaningful projects, businesses want people who can deliver, and everyone wants to understand what AI actually means for their role. 

That's a good thing because recruitment should never have been about keywords. Fundimentally, it's about people, capability, experience and fit. 

We've always believed that recruitment should be straightforward: 

Do what you say you'll do. 

Do it properly. 

Treat people well. 

Know your market. 

And most importantly, understand the people you're representing. 

The SAP market is going to change enormously over the next few years. AI will change roles, S/4HANA will continue to drive transformation, BTP and integration will become increasingly important, Clean Core will become less optional, and the definition of a "great SAP consultant" will evolve. 

But one thing will not change: businesses will still need brilliant people. And brilliant people will still want to work with businesses that value what they bring. That's where we believe recruitment adds real value. Not by finding a CV, but by finding the person. 

The question we're asking in August: Are you hiring for the SAP skills you need today, or the SAP skills your business will need in 2028? 

Because the difference between the two is getting bigger every month.