What Does a Software Developer Do? Skills, Salary, and More

The IT industry's potential is far from exhaustion as of now, by the end of 2020: it keeps exploding with some new rapidly evolving multi-billion sectors and exciting ideas whose horizons lie far beyond the limits of our imagination. Just to name a few: AI-aided systems and Machine Learning, Internet of Things and Big Data, digital assets and DeFi, cloud computing. 

We bet you've heard of a few if only not all of them. These technologies can bring significant benefits to businesses investing in them early and pay back a fortune very soon! Many of these fields are still the Wild West of technology and nobody can predict how big the prize can be for those who jump at the opportunity. And well, if we dare to call this promising situation the Wild West, then who're the cowboys? Right, software developers! They do everything to propel the industry.

If you or your company wants a slice of the pie, it's the best time to invest into your own team of software engineers who'll create or adapt best software systems for you. Before you get down to drafting software engineering interview questions, make sure you clearly understand what the software developers (a.k.a coders, engineers, or simply programmers) actually do.

Types Of Software Developers And What They Do

Software developer is a general term for a variety of categories. If you're going to find and hire some software developers for your company, you should know that besides the common coding interview questions, there are lots of specialized ones, depending on every specific type of a developer you may potentially hire. Remember, the industry is booming and the labor market offers a very rich palette of specialists to choose from. You can start forming up your software development team by finding a skillful team lead who will do the necessary to gather the rest of its members. Of course, since software developers are highly paid specialists, it makes sense to consider hiring part-time or outsourced employees. Let's consider some of the existing software developer types: 

Front-end Developer: Creates client-side visual user interfaces (UI) and applications that are to be run on a user's web browser. This job requires some knowledge of human-machine interaction (user experience, UX) and user interface design principles; most of the daily tasks are related to overcoming cross-browser compatibility issues and managing UI details and elements for their best performance, it doesn't include dealing with hardware. Front-end application development questions should be about CSS, JavaScript, HTML. Average salary: $105K per year (USA).

Back-end Developer: Creates applications or optimizes the software-driven processes that are to be running on the server-side of the system (far behind the layers open to ordinary users). In many systems (for example, web search engines) - the front-end appearance can be pretty simple, while the mechanisms behind it can be extremely complex and not yet visible to users. Back-end developers have to deal with such "techy" things as hardware drivers, server sockets and ports, databases, data storage systems, caching systems, logging systems, etc. Back-end software developer interview questions should include the usage of Java, C, C++, Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. Average salary: $96K per year (USA).

Full-stack Developer: A smart guy who has mastered the major skills peculiar to both front-end and back-end branches. A full-stack developer can build and maintain a fully functional web application from scratch. Full-stack developer's tech interview questions should cover both fields of development, while the average salary across the USA can reach as high as $107K per year.

Mobile Developer (or mobile app developer): As the title suggests, he or she builds applications that can run on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. This type of specialist knows well the ins and outs of mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android along with frameworks utilized for programming under these environments. The skills of a mobile developer are grouped around Java, Swift, Rust, and Objective-C, while the average salary is about $100K per year in the USA.

Game Developer: Well, it's pretty clear that he or she writes code for games, but there are lots of different gaming platforms requiring different skills, including mobile gaming, online gaming, PC, VR, etc. In most cases, game developers will use the following frameworks: DirectX, OpenGL, Unity 3D, WebGL, and languages such as C, C++, and Java, while the average US-based salary would be something between $80K and $100K per year.

Is It All I Need To Know About Software Developers?

It's hard to tell when it's enough for you, but if you're looking for software developers who can cope with your ideas\projects in the field of IT, then good news is that you don't have to ask tough programming questions yourself (especially, if you're not a tech expert yourself). You can simply partner with the hiring experts such as BridgeTeams, which can open a remote office for you and introduce your project to an experienced team of developers that are all set to start working for you, without costly hiring and onboarding process on your company's end. Since these software developers are mainly from Eastern Europe, your costs for hiring them will be much lower than for hiring the residents of the USA or Western Europe.