Front end developers specialize in website design and functionality. Over the years, the role has grown increasingly complex as designers are tasked with optimizing websites for smartphones, tablets, and desktops alike.
Today, front end engineers need to strike a delicate balance between designing for functionality, structure, and aesthetics. These professionals often collaborate with back end engineers and user experience designers to cultivate a compelling application or site design. Back end engineers create the underlying computation-based logic of a website, as well as any proprietary software that their employer might need. These professionals ensure that the data and resources requested by an end-user are delivered correctly and quickly.
The back end consists of two components: the server and the database. While the database stores permanent information — think user profiles or product listings — the server is responsible for fulfilling client requests. Back end developers work directly with data, application integration, APIs, and other back end processes. The role requires extensive technical know-how and knowledge of several back end programming languages.
As the name suggests, full stack developers do it all. These versatile professionals have extensive training in both front and back end programming, and so can shift effortlessly between the two disciplines.
The front and back end are inextricably linked in a functional system; when a user interacts with a feature on the front end, the back end should immediately fulfill any requests that they might make. As a jack-of-all-trades, full stack developers should have a holistic understanding of how an entire operation functions. However, they may have more experience in one discipline or the other.
As you might have guessed from the name, mobile developers create software specifically for mobile devices. These programmers build applications tailored to the unique characteristics of mobile platforms such as Android and iOS. According to research from Statista , billion mobile app downloads took place in alone.
Regardless of your specialty, all software developers are required to have the same core set of skills. As we mentioned earlier, all software developers will need to build the same foundation of core programming skills; however, you may need to pick up additional coding languages or capabilities if you want to tailor education to one of the specialties mentioned above.
As in every tech-centric field, there will always be more to discover. Adopt a learning mindset and dedicate yourself to learning any and all languages that pique your programming interest. See below for the major categories:.
Thanks to the prevalence of open-source-everything, aspiring developers have no shortage of ways to obtain these skills. College is perhaps the most straightforward and traditional route towards landing a fulfilling role in software development. A college education has its benefits. For one, you can trust an undergraduate program to be comprehensive; rather than focus solely on practical skills, college programs often take a deep dive into the theoretical concepts that underlie coding practice.
Students learn to think like programmers and are often compelled by their curricula to create projects for their professional portfolios. A comprehensive education in coding languages, algorithms, and data structures equips students with insight into how computers operate under the hood. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
After almost a decade leading product and engineering teams, I realized I was ready for a new challenge, so this summer, I started freelance technical writing. I didn't know it when I got my first client, but I quickly realized that technical writing is one of many valid career paths for former software engineers. This realization got me thinking: "What other jobs can software engineers do besides write software?
This post will go through many of the career paths available to software developers, especially recent bootcamp graduates. I'll explain what each job does, how you can get your foot in the door, and the long-term prospects. Whether you're looking for an alternate career path because you haven't found a job as an engineer or because you realized software development wasn't for you, this guide will help you find a career fit for your skillset. While software engineers benefit from having people skills, some bootcamp graduates I've talked to aren't looking forward to sitting quietly and writing code all day.
If you want a career path that provides more opportunities to interact with people, these jobs may suit you. As more companies strive to build relationships with developers who are their customers, users, or advocates, the field of developer relations is growing quickly.
Developer relations professionals some companies call them developer advocates, developer evangelists, community managers, or "DevRels" help establish and build a community around their company's software.
They are often involved in creating demo applications, writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and managing social media accounts for tech-focused companies. Many of the big-name tech companies Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. They're two of my favorite influencers in the space, and they put out the Community Pulse podcast together. While there's some overlap with developer relations, developer marketing is more outwardly focused.
Marketing to developers is especially tricky because we don't like to be sold, so many of the more aggressive marketing tactics that work for other markets are taboo here. As a person with a technical background, you'll naturally understand the way developers think, and you'll have more clout than a traditional marketer might.
SlashData puts out a lot of great content about Developer Marketing, including a book on the topic in If you'd like to get started in this field, learn online marketing: SEO, social media, content marketing, influencer marketing, etc. You can practice many of these skills on your blog to demonstrate your knowledge before applying to jobs. Many engineers are turned off by any job with "sales" in the title, but that's just because we've all encountered bad salespeople. The truth is that everyone is in sales.
Whether you're "selling" yourself as a job candidate during the interview process or advocating for a new framework on your engineering team, sales means matching a customer's needs with the right solution. Sales engineers are unique in that they have some level of technical expertise. This can be an excellent match for developers who don't want to write code all day but understand software engineering.
The other nice part about sales is that you don't need any specialized certifications to do it. Hubspot offers a great introduction to some skills and resources you can start with. As more companies build software tools and services for engineers, sales engineers will likely become even more in-demand in the coming decade.
I've met some honest, genuine tech recruiters Taylor Dorsett and Matt Hoffman from my home city of Chicago, for example , but I've also met some awful, clueless recruiters who are purely focused on churning through candidates to hit their quota. The good news is that with a background in software development, you'll have more empathy and credibility than many other technical recruiters out there.
Like sales, this field requires a more outgoing, relationship-focused personality, but it doesn't require specialized certifications or courses. Unfortunately, many of the entry-level jobs in tech recruiting are at low-quality firms, so be sure to check their reputations on Glassdoor before you apply. If you want to remain on the product team, but you're not sure you want to be a software developer, there are many fields you can transition into.
These roles work closely with engineers, so your coding knowledge will help you, but they also require other specialized knowledge. While there are subtle differences between quality assurance and test engineers , both deal with testing software before it goes live.
If you have an eye for detail and you like coming up with creative ways to automate repetitive tasks, this could be a great career path. It will likely require some coding as well as some manual testing work. Smaller companies have their software engineers test each other's code, so dedicated test and QA roles are most common in large organizations. There is a lot of variance between how companies do testing, so be sure to ask about the tools they use, how automated their tests are, and how much your role will entail manual vs.
On the other end of the product development lifecycle are business analysts. They typically work as a bridge between the business and technical teams to ensure that requirements, limitations, and timelines are understood. They may also hop in and help with testing and quality assurance, depending on the team's structure, so they need to have a wide range of product knowledge. If you have a background in business, product development, or design and some coding skills, you may qualify for an entry-level business analyst role.
If not, I'd recommend looking into some online courses to help you develop a basic understanding of the role and what it entails. Like business analysts, project managers must understand their product's business requirements and technical constraints. The key difference is that project managers typically go deep into a single project.
They often define tasks and resources for the teams working on the project and track the project's progress as it nears release. Smaller companies may combine the business analyst, project management, scrum master, and product manager roles in various ways, but larger companies may define separate responsibilities. Excellent organization skills, understanding of the business, and people skills are critical to succeed as a project manager.
This role hinges on your ability to manage expectations and motivate people who might be more senior or experienced than you, so you have to build trust quickly.
This role's multifaceted nature makes it a good fit for analytical, technical people who don't want to write code anymore. But instead of actually becoming a video game developer, I started programming printers, wrote a bunch of web applications, made some mobile apps, did a bunch of other things, and ended up writing books that drip with sarcasm and making a bunch of YouTube videos about how to pick up girls as a software developer.
But, in all seriousness, this is a viable career option. Embedded systems developers work on mostly real-time operating systems , which run inside of electronics, hence the name embedded systems—clever, I know.
In all seriousness though, data science is a huge and fast-growing area that software developers can go into, especially if they want to make the big bucks. A data scientist utilizes skills and technologies from several different fields to take large amounts of data, make sense of it, and draw conclusions and predictions.
Data scientists often utilize their programming skills to write custom programs to extract, manipulate and reorganize data in order to represent it in a digestible way. With the ever-growing amount of data, data science definitely holds some interesting possibilities.
Instead, they create tools to be used within an organization or internal applications. I actually find tools development to be extremely interesting and rewarding, because when you build an effective tool that helps your team or another team do their job better, the effect can be very noticeable. Enterprise development can be very challenging and requires a unique set of abilities and knowledge since enterprise developers often have to have a deep understanding of the organization and the political factions which shape how software is crafted.
Cloud development is also a fairly new field, but also rapidly growing as more and more applications move to the cloud and a distributed model. Cloud developers need to understand how the cloud works, especially in regards to scalability and availability. There is a serious lack of talented software developers who understand the proper way to create automation frameworks and write automated tests to test other software.
A software developer who focuses on test automation builds tools for automating the testing of applications and writes automated tests to execute and verify functionality. Test automation can be extremely challenging and complex because it essentially requires you to write an application to test another application. This glass ceiling is the practical limit on how far you can advance or how much you can get paid as a software developer. As businesses in almost all global sectors begin to fully embrace digitisation, so grows the demand for software developers to power the digital world.
A developer must keep up to date with current skills or risk losing their competitive edge. For many, a significant contributing factor in pursuing this career path is the high demand and above-average starting salary. As you gain experience and develop your technical skills, you will have regular opportunities to progress your career.
It all depends on personality and career goals: some developers like to manage teams while others prefer to get their hands dirty with code. Boot camps like freeCodeCamp are becoming a popular route for those looking to save time and money. Most online courses focus on the specific skills required to fast-tracking your way into a well-paid position.
After getting the relevant qualification or completing your online learning course, you will need to focus on your resume. Check out these 9 key things to consider when compiling your resume. Many jobs you apply for will require relevant work experience. The catch is that gaining experience requires landing a job. In this case, opt for internship positions to help you gain real-world experience. If the company sees potential they may offer you a permanent position.
Software development was one of the first major fields that embraced the remote working model as it is not necessary to keep devs locked up in an office to get the job done. Freelancing is a great way to gain experience across various project types and organisations while building your portfolio.
Once you have fine-tuned your skills and gained enough experience, you can either choose to continue freelancing or settle into a company that suits your career goals.
Once you have gained enough experience and sharpened your skills, a good way to break into the industry is to specialise. There are many different roles a software developer can consider, and having a good idea of what area you want to specialise in will make your career path clear. Here is a list of the different types of development and engineering career options that will help you decide if embarking on a career as a software developer is right for you.
The video game industry is big business and growing rapidly, making game development a highly sought-after profession. The role typically involves modelling physics, 2D and 3D graphics, and game mechanics. The mobile app industry is already highly lucrative and showing no signs of slowing down.
Mobile app developers primarily work on iOS and Android apps and are responsible for creating the features and functionalities of your favourite apps. A front-end developer is responsible for building the user interface of a website or application. They are in charge of creating the look and feel of a website and handle anything a user interacts with.
A general rule is to ensure the user has a seamless and engaging experience. This route requires an understanding of user behaviour and the latest design trends.
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