Do You Need Vibe Coding for NetSuite and JD Edwards? This Is Why Your Next ERP Developer Needs to Think Differently
Let's be direct: most ERP customization projects take too long, cost too much, and leave your team buried in technical debt that nobody wants to touch two years later.
Vibe coding is changing that — but only if you have the right people doing it. And when it comes to NetSuite and JD Edwards specifically, "the right people" is a very short list.
The ERP Customization Problem Nobody Talks About
If you're running NetSuite or JD Edwards, you already know the drill. You need a SuiteScript customization, a new workflow in SuiteFlow, or a JD Edwards orchestration built out — and suddenly you're looking at a six-week timeline, a contractor who "knows NetSuite" but has never touched your industry, and a scope that somehow grows every time someone looks at it.
Traditional ERP development is slow by design. These are complex, mission-critical platforms. Mistakes don't just break a feature — they can take down financial reporting, disrupt supply chains, or corrupt records that took years to build. So developers move carefully, and that caution has a price.
Vibe coding doesn't eliminate that caution. What it does is eliminate the unnecessary slowness — the boilerplate, the repetitive scaffolding, the hours spent writing code that any competent AI can generate in seconds. The result is a developer who can spend their time on what actually requires human judgment: architecture, business logic, integration strategy, and making sure the AI-generated code actually does what it's supposed to do inside your specific ERP environment.
What Does Vibe Coding Actually Look Like in NetSuite?
NetSuite's development environment — SuiteCloud — is built on SuiteScript, a JavaScript-based scripting language that controls everything from custom workflows and automation to RESTful API integrations and SuiteCommerce front-end builds. It's powerful. It's also highly specific to Oracle's ecosystem, and it doesn't forgive shortcuts.
Here's where vibe coding creates real leverage:
SuiteScript development. A skilled developer can now describe the business logic of a SuiteScript 2.1 client script or scheduled script in natural language and have an AI generate a solid working draft in minutes. The developer's job shifts from line-by-line typing to reviewing, refining, and validating that the generated code handles NetSuite's specific API requirements, governor limits, and execution contexts correctly.
SuiteFlow workflow automation. Complex multi-step workflows that previously required a specialist to map out, build, and test across several days can now be prototyped far faster — with the developer guiding AI to generate the underlying logic while they focus on exception handling and real-world edge cases.
SuiteTalk REST/SOAP integrations. Integration projects between NetSuite and third-party platforms — a common and often painful requirement — benefit enormously from AI-assisted code generation. Authentication flows, data mapping, error handling — much of this can be scaffolded quickly, leaving the developer to focus on the parts that break in production.
SuiteAnalytics and custom reporting. Business intelligence requirements that used to require back-and-forth between developers and finance teams can now move faster, with AI helping generate search definitions and report structures that developers then tune to match exact business requirements.
The critical point: none of this works without a developer who deeply understands NetSuite's architecture. Vibe coding in the wrong hands inside a NetSuite environment is how you end up with governor limit violations, broken scheduled scripts, and customizations that fall apart after the next platform update. The AI generates code. A NetSuite expert makes sure that code belongs in your system.
What Does Vibe Coding Look Like in JD Edwards?
JD Edwards is a different animal entirely — and that's precisely why the talent question is so important here.
JDE development traditionally means working inside a tightly controlled environment: Business Function development in C or NER (Named Event Rules), Orchestrator Framework for modern integrations, UDO (User Defined Objects) for forms and reports, and a customization model that has historically demanded developers who have lived inside the platform for years. You don't just pick up JD Edwards. You grow into it.
Vibe coding is beginning to change the economics of JDE development, but it requires a very specific type of practitioner to do it responsibly:
Orchestrator and REST API development. The JD Edwards Orchestrator Framework is the modern gateway for integrations and automation — and it's where AI-assisted development is making the biggest dent. Developers can use vibe coding tools to accelerate the build-out of orchestrations, cross-reference business function documentation, and generate integration logic that connects JDE to modern cloud platforms faster than ever before.
NER and ER logic. While the core JDE toolset is proprietary, experienced developers are finding that AI tools — when given the right context about JDE's event-driven logic model — can assist in generating business function logic, reducing the manual effort on repetitive patterns while leaving architectural decisions firmly in human hands.
UDO and form personalization. User Defined Objects, including Composite Application Framework (Café One) layouts and EnterpriseOne Pages, involve a significant amount of structured configuration. AI assistance can help developers work through these faster, reducing the time from requirements to working prototype.
Modernization projects. Many JDE clients are mid-journey on a migration from older versions — E9.1 to Tools Release 9.2, for example — or are extending JDE with modern microservices and cloud integrations. These projects involve enormous amounts of structured, repeatable development work that is exactly where vibe coding delivers its highest ROI.
The caveat here is even stronger than with NetSuite: JD Edwards expertise is genuinely scarce. The platform has a smaller talent pool than SAP or Oracle Cloud, and the developers who know it well have built that knowledge over years. Vibe coding can help those experts work faster — but it cannot replace them. If someone is telling you they can vibe code their way through a JDE orchestration build without real platform experience, walk away.
The Talent Gap Nobody Prepared For
Here's the uncomfortable reality for most ERP-dependent organizations right now: the skills required to vibe code effectively inside NetSuite or JD Edwards don't exist in large numbers anywhere.
You need someone who:
Understands your ERP platform at an architectural level — not just functional use, but how it processes, stores, and exposes data
Has genuine hands-on experience with the platform's development toolset (SuiteScript, SuiteCloud, JDE Orchestrator, NER, etc.)
Knows how to prompt AI tools effectively for ERP-specific development tasks — which means understanding both what the AI can generate reliably and where it will confidently produce wrong answers
Can review and validate AI-generated code against platform-specific constraints, not just general programming best practices
Has enough security awareness to catch the kinds of vulnerabilities that AI code generation is known to introduce, particularly in systems that handle financial data
That's a very precise intersection of skills. It's not a traditional ERP developer. It's not a generic AI developer. It's someone who has evolved their practice specifically at the intersection of deep ERP knowledge and modern AI-assisted development.
Finding that person on your own is genuinely difficult. Most job boards don't have a filter for it. Most résumés don't describe it clearly — partly because the role is so new, and partly because the people doing it best are already employed and not actively looking.
How Enspire Partners Approaches This Differently
We've been placing ERP developers — NetSuite, JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, Workday — for over 20 years. We know what good looks like in these platforms, and we know how to verify it. That's not something you can replicate by posting a job description with "vibe coding experience required" and hoping for the best.
When we're identifying vibe coding talent for ERP environments, we're specifically evaluating:
Platform depth first. Can this person articulate how SuiteScript governor limits work? Do they understand JDE's Orchestrator Framework well enough to design an integration from scratch? Vibe coding skills layered on top of shallow ERP knowledge are dangerous. Platform depth comes first.
AI tool proficiency in context. There's a difference between someone who uses GitHub Copilot to autocomplete syntax and someone who can effectively prompt Claude or GPT-4 to generate a SuiteScript scheduled script with proper error handling and logging. We test for the latter.
Code review discipline. The single biggest risk with AI-assisted ERP development is accepting generated code that looks right but isn't. We look for developers who have built systematic habits around reviewing, testing, and validating AI output — not just shipping it.
ERP integration experience. NetSuite and JD Edwards don't exist in isolation. We prioritize candidates who have built integrations between these platforms and the broader enterprise ecosystem — because that's where the hardest, most valuable vibe coding work happens.
Whether you need a contract specialist to lead a specific NetSuite SuiteScript modernization, a permanent hire to build out your JDE Orchestrator capabilities, or a team to tackle a larger AI-assisted ERP development initiative, we can find the right people — and more importantly, we can tell the difference between the candidates who actually have these skills and the ones who just know the right words to put on a résumé.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can vibe coding be used safely in NetSuite production environments? Yes — when performed by developers with genuine SuiteScript expertise who treat AI-generated code as a draft, not a finished product. The key risks in NetSuite (governor limit violations, improper script types, unsupported API usage) are all things an experienced developer catches in review. The AI doesn't know your account's governance model. Your developer does.
Is vibe coding applicable to JD Edwards, given how proprietary the platform is? More than most people realize, particularly for Orchestrator-based integrations and modernization work. JDE's move toward REST APIs and modern integration frameworks has created real surface area for AI-assisted development. The constraint remains the same as always: you need developers who know JDE deeply before AI tooling adds meaningful value.
What's the risk of using vibe coding for ERP customization? The primary risks are security vulnerabilities in AI-generated code, logic errors that pass testing but fail in production, and customizations that break after platform updates. All of these are manageable with the right developer — someone who reviews output rigorously and understands the platform's specific constraints. They become significant risks when organizations try to use vibe coding as a shortcut around the need for real ERP expertise.
How do I know if a developer actually knows how to vibe code for ERP? Ask them to walk you through a recent project: what they prompted the AI to generate, how they validated the output, what the AI got wrong, and how they fixed it. Genuine vibe coding practitioners have specific, detailed answers to all of these questions. People who added it to their résumé last month do not.
Can Enspire Partners place vibe coding talent on a contract basis? Yes. We offer contract, contract-to-hire, and permanent placement across all engagement models. For most organizations exploring vibe coding in an ERP context for the first time, a contract specialist is often the right first move — it lets you prove the value on a specific project before making a permanent commitment.
The Bottom Line
Vibe coding is real, it's here, and it's already changing what's possible in ERP development. For NetSuite and JD Edwards organizations, it represents a genuine opportunity to move faster, spend less on customization, and reduce the technical debt that accumulates in every ERP environment over time.
But it only delivers on that promise when you have the right talent executing it. And right now, that talent is hard to find, hard to evaluate, and actively being sought by every forward-thinking organization in your industry.
That's where we come in.
Ready to find a vibe coding expert who actually knows your ERP platform? Reach out to Enspire Partners. We've spent 20 years learning what good ERP talent looks like — and we're already building the pipelines for what comes next.
