Hire SAP® Developer in Ukraine: Salaries & Roles
SAP® is one of the biggest and broadest ERP platforms out there. It allows business owners to manage business processes – sales, inventory, manufacturing, and others. The platform is known for expandable functionality – business owners can create custom reports or validation processes to improve the efficiency of the enterprise. In this post, we will take a closer look at the responsibilities of SAP® developers, key differences between SAP® developers and consultants, and examine the benefits of outsourcing SAP® development to SAP® consulting companies.
Closer Look at SAP®: Third Biggest Software Company in the World
SAP® is a German-based company that, despite not getting that much spotlight as other software giants (Microsoft and Oracle), has an impactful presence in tech. In 2019, the company’s revenue hit over 27 billion euros and showed an impressive growth rate.
Around the world, over 200 million enterprises use the ERP. The platform supports businesses of all industries and scales, offering a reliable cloud-based infrastructure. The main features of the ecosystem are:
- Financial management – a wide range of tools for accounting, asset management, and budget reporting.
- Inventory and supply chain control – warehouse management tools, instruments for streamlined procurement, and an improved data management dashboard.
- Sales and customer relationships – lead management, marketing campaign oversight and analytics, customer management, and detailed reports on a business’ client acquisition and retention.
- Business intelligence – tools for large-scale reporting, a data visualization dashboard, a wide range of metrics for custom analytics.
Such an extensive range of features helps SAP® fit easily into the processes of small-scale and large-scale businesses. However, the company’s primary advantage is its extendable functionality. SAP® is written in a custom programming language called ABAP. Developers can learn it and create programs to further leverage the power of the software.
SAP® Developers vs SAP® Consultants: the Difference
Since SAP® is a complex platform, business owners are often overwhelmed with the wide range of features at their disposal. To make sure they make full use of SAP® tools, company managers often hire SAP® consultants or developers.
Although these types of professionals share in-depth knowledge of the ERP, their responsibilities are slightly different.
A SAP® consultant works closely with business owners and the team to select the platform’s features with a higher impact on operational efficiency. It’s common for SAP® consultants to suggest which programs and integration will improve workflows, write up a list of functional requirements, and pass it over to the development team.
Other than that, this professional will consult everyone involved in enterprise management on how to use the platform.
A SAP® software engineer is a coder skilled in ABAP, SAP®’s core programming language. After receiving a list of requirements from a consultant, this professional will build a program with every needed feature from scratch. After the product is ready for deployment, developers will oversee testing. They will also assist in maintenance after the integration or a dashboard is released.
We summarized the differences between the responsibilities of a SAP® consultant and a full-stack SAP® engineer in the table below:
| SAP® consultant | SAP® developer |
| Deep industry knowledge | Deep tech infrastructure understanding |
| Designs and implements ERP usage strategies | Designs and tests custom solutions in ABAP |
| Documents SAP® processes and presenting performance reports | Performs code reviews for existing integrations. |
| Keeps track of SAP® updates and latest offers, suggesting the most relevant ones to the team. | Provides continuous support throughout the product’s lifecycle. |
| Ensures the compliance of business processes with industry regulations | Ensures that the specs of the solution match business requirements. |
SAP® Modules SAP® Developers Work with
Since SAP® is a large-scale solution, it comprises hundreds of features and tools. To keep the platform manageable, the company grouped the ERP’s functionality in modules – applications dedicated to specific business processes. There are SAP® modules for managing human resources, financial operations, marketing, customer relationships, and other workflows.
Let’s take a look at the most popular and widely used SAP® modules:
- SAP® CRM helps streamline customer relationship management. This module focuses on providing business owners with client-facing tools – a marketing campaign manager, customer segmentation platform, email marketing, and lead management suite. There’s an analytics dashboard as well, allowing for a big-picture view of the campaign’s efficiency.
- SAP® ERP is one of the ecosystem’s largest modules. The ERP includes a wide range of tools for production planning, material management, warehouse upkeep, and distribution.
- SAP® Reports is a database-integrated module that helps gather, analyze, and visualize customer, financial, or business performance data. Custom report templates and a wide range of data visualizing tools (chart and graph editors) are the main features of SAP® Reports.
- SAP® Hybris is an eCommerce-facing content management module. It helps marketers manage large product catalogs and create personalized recommendations based on a shopper’s buying history. On top of that, Hybris comes with a wide range of cloud-based tools for streamlining customer service – allowing teams to stay in touch with leads 24/7.
- SAP® Hana is a scalable and secure database that stores all relevant business data and fuels strategic decision-making. The module comes both as an on-premise and cloud-based platform and gives business developers access to powerful tools for broad and multimodal analysis.
- SAP® ABAP is a module developers use to create integrations and custom applications that run within the ecosystem. It has a three-layered server architecture comprising a database, application, and presentation server.
- SAP® BI/BO. SAP® business intelligence and business objects suite is designed to aggregate data from different modules and load it into a data warehouse. Later, data analysts can use built-in tools for processing and analyzing these insights. Business owners the BI modules to find data-driven evidence to support ideas and strategies.
- SAP® UI is a framework that supports dozens of design libraries. These interfaces can be used as a part of mobile app design or run in browsers. UI elements offered by the platform are responsive and easily customizable – business owners don’t need coding skills to set up an interface.
- NetWeaver is a module that offers a centralized environment for integrating, data, business processes, and resources involved in enterprise management. As a server platform, it’s often used by SAP® developers and consultants for expanding or narrowing down the functionality of existing tools.
SAP® Developer Job Responsibilities
Other than understanding the platform and having a confident command of ABAP, an SAP® engineer needs to be well-versed in tech trends, understand how to use popular software development tools, and be skilled in communicating ideas in a business-friendly way.
Job responsibilities of a SAP® developer:
- Designing, coding, and testing SAP® ABAP solutions
- Maintaining existing components and updating them
- Ensuring the compliance of components with business needs
- Suggesting new tools the tech team can use to work effectively
- Contributing to the design of SAP® component development strategies
Required skills of a SAP® developer:
- Advanced understanding of object-oriented programming
- Knowledge of best coding practices and standards
- 4+ years of experience in ABAP development.
- Intermediate knowledge of Java (some companies request a SAP® developer with Python skills)
- Hands-on experience in deploying retail projects
- Readiness to multi-task and manage multiple projects simultaneously
- Familiarity with top SAP® modules
Preferred skills for an SAP® developer:
- BS or BA degree.
- Excellent command of the MS Office Suite.
- Experience in developing for SAP® or other ERP suites.
- Excellent written and oral communication.
SAP® Developer Salaries
SAP® is a technically robust system and ABAP is one of the most challenging programming languages for developers to master. That’s why skilled SAP® programmers are rare to come by and those that do typically have high paychecks.
However, it’s worth noting that SAP® developer salaries vary around the world. Here’s the breakdown of average SAP® programmer rates and SAP® consultant salaries in North America, Western, and Eastern Europe, as well as the SAP® developer salary UK.
| Junior SAP® developer salary | Middle SAP® developer salary | Senior SAP® developer salary | |
| USA (source) | $1,791 | $10,225 | $16,916 |
| Germany (source) | $4,166 | $5,458 | $6,366 |
| UK (source) | $7,716 | $8,541 | $6,366 |
| Denmark (source) | $7,716 | $10,166 | $12,566 |
| Ukraine | $1,700-2,000* | $2,000-2,500* | $3,000-3,500* |
*numbers are based on our in-house Recruiting Team research done over popular local job boards
The analysis of SAP® developer salaries shows that hiring programmers abroad is a powerful cost-cutting mechanism. In Ukraine, for example, a business owner can hire a senior developer by the rates of a US- or EU-based junior. Thus, choosing a lower-cost region for sourcing SAP® development talent is a smart strategic decision for business owners.
Top SAP® Developer Hiring Strategies
When it comes to handling tech projects, there are different approaches to hiring engineers. While some business owners swear by scouting talent abroad, others prefer running an in-house team. Smaller-scale businesses often consider collaborating with freelancers to keep the collaboration flexible and commitment-free.
If you want to create a custom SAP® component, you might be wondering what type of hiring strategy is the best one for you. Take a closer look at each talent sourcing model and choose the right one for you.
In-house teams
Running a full-time team has its benefits – it gives business owners access to talent that will focus solely on a single project instead of working for multiple companies at once. Other than that, local teams are easier to manage than international vendors or freelancers scattered across the globe.
However, there are downsides to hiring a local in-house SAP® developer: higher salaries and a larger amount of managerial work business owners have to deal with – setting up the workspace, designing processes from scratch, investing in tools programmers need to build a component.
You should hire local SAP® developers if:
- You run multiple ongoing projects each of which needs constantly available tech talent.
- You live in an area with lower developer salaries and don’t need to hire globally to cut operating costs.
- You want a developer to maintain the component long-term and constantly stay in touch with the team for consults.
Freelancers
Working with a freelancer is a win-win strategy for a one-time SAP® development project. If you are not looking for a programmer to join the team for years, delegating smaller tasks to a contractor is a way to get more flexibility, avoid unnecessary commitments, and cut project completion costs.
Unreliability is the main concern business owners have about working with freelancers. Since the agreements are rarely contractually-confirmed, it’s harder to prevent confidential data theft or ensure timely product delivery.
Considering the pros and the cons, you should hire freelance SAP® developers if:
- You don’t have a sustainable stream of SAP® development tasks that would allow supporting a full-time team.
- You are bootstrapped for budget and looking for ways to cut costs.
- You want to avoid dealing with paperwork and prefer focusing on core business activities instead.
- The project doesn’t involve sharing confidential data.
Outsourcing vendors
Last but not least, if you want to have the scalability and commitment of full-time teams without having to hire expensive local talent and maintain one more department at the company, outsourcing SAP® development is a sensible choice.
Faster product delivery, cost-cutting, and on-demand scalability are benefits of reaching out to an outsourcing vendor. As for the downsides, business owners need to be mindful about creating detailed service agreements which takes time and effort. However, once the formalities are out of the way, you will be in for efficient and productive collaboration.
You should outsource SAP® development if:
- There’s high competition among employers for local talent.
- Developers in your region have high salaries and you want to cut costs on hiring a SAP® developer in remote regions.
- You don’t have an infrastructure for SAP® development and don’t want to spend time on building one.
- You want to get access to the innovation and skills of an established SAP® development team.
- You want to be able to request assigning more or fewer developers to your project anytime.
Hire SAP® Developers in Ukraine with Mobilunity
Hiring a skilled SAP® developer is a decisive factor in improving operational efficiency. If you want to hire programmers who are experienced in designing scalable SAP® components and have affordable rates, reach out to Mobilunity.
We are a leading SAP® development service provider with over 10 years of experience. As a trusted software development vendor, the company completed hundreds of projects in e-commerce for SMEs and large-scale corporations.
Hire an experienced SAP® developer to re-imagine the efficiency of your business. Get top-notch engineering assistance from Mobilunity!
Disclaimer: SAP® is the registered trademark of SAP SE in Germany and in several other countries. Mobilunity is not related to, affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the SAP SE.
