There was a time when being an SAP ABAP developer meant mastering one thing: writing beautiful, bulletproof code inside the SAP core. You built it, you tested it, and it ran — sometimes for decades. But now? Now, SAP wants you to unlearn half of that and rewire your brain.
Welcome to the age of GROW with SAP and RISE with SAP, where the rules have changed — and if you’re still clinging to SE80 like a life raft, you’re going to get left behind.
So, what’s the difference between these two shiny cloud acronyms? And more importantly, where does a developer like you fit in?
Let’s start with GROW. GROW with SAP is built for speed. It’s SAP’s off-the-shelf cloud ERP for midmarket companies that don’t want to spend two years customizing tables. Everything’s preconfigured, lean, and locked down. Custom ABAP? Forget it. You’re not inside the core anymore. You’re building side-by-side on SAP BTP, using CAP or low-code tools that feel more like frontend dev than backend logic.
It’s clean. It’s fast. But it’s also… well, kind of boring if you’re used to getting your hands dirty in custom modules.
Then there’s RISE — SAP’s all-in-one enterprise transformation machine. Big companies use RISE when they want to move their crusty old ECC system to S/4HANA and not just survive but evolve. It’s messy. It’s complex. It’s glorious.
This is where the real ABAP work lives. But not the old-school kind — we’re talking RAP, CDS views, clean-core principles, and refactoring 20-year-old user exits into something that won’t implode during the next upgrade. You still get to code, but the philosophy has changed: don’t touch the core. Extend it, decouple it, clean it.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s what modern software engineering looks like outside the SAP bubble. SAP just finally caught up.
Here’s the twist: whether it’s GROW or RISE, the core message is the same — the core is sacred. Don’t touch it. Extensions go outside. Think microservices. Think APIs. Think composability. SAP doesn’t want you tweaking standard anymore. It wants you to build like a cloud-native developer, not a t-code cowboy.
And honestly? That’s good.
Because here’s the truth SAP devs don’t say out loud enough: most of us didn’t get into this to write spaghetti Z-code that breaks every time the system updates. We got into it to solve real business problems — and now we get to do it using better tools, cleaner methods, and modern architecture.
Still, the shift is jarring. If you’re working on a GROW project, you might go weeks without writing a single line of ABAP. You’ll live in BTP, pushing out CAP services or orchestrating business rules through no-code flows. If you’re in a RISE project, you’ll be knee-deep in RAP, translating decades of custom logic into something upgrade-safe.
Neither is easy. Both demand that you evolve.
But here’s the kicker: SAP developers who adapt right now are going to be unstoppable. Because you understand the old world and the new one. You speak legacy and cloud. You can walk into any project, look at the technical debt, and know what to keep, what to rewrite, and what to kill.
And if you’re in Milton Keynes, or anywhere in the UK for that matter, the demand is hot. Employers aren’t looking for “ABAP ninjas” (please let that term die). They’re looking for developers who understand this moment — this bridge between past and future — and can actually build it.
So yeah. GROW is clean and shiny and locked down. RISE is messy and full of potential. But both are part of the same journey.
And you, the ABAP dev who’s willing to learn CAP and unlearn a few habits along the way?
You’re exactly who they need.
Ready to join a project that actually challenges you?
We’re hiring ABAP developers across GROW and RISE projects and beyond. Apply now.