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By Faiza Khalid
Verified Expert
5 years of experience
Faiza is a CIS engineer with a keen interest in software development, AI research, and technology writing.
Are you looking for a guide on expert developers?
Software technology is continuously evolving. Software developers often find themselves in a quandary of whether to keep up with various latest development technologies or specialize in just one. This includes programming languages and frameworks. The chosen path either leads to a generalist mobile or web developer or an expert developer.
The global developer population is about to reach 28.7 million by 2024. Not every developer is an expert. So how do you distinguish an expert from a generalist or an intermediate developer? Read on as we explain what expert developers are.
Expert Developers
Expert developers are software engineers with significant experience in software development in several industries. They have specialized skills in a specific technology set gained by working in the software industry for many years.
Apart from programming, expert developers have experience with software design, testing, and maintenance.
Let’s look at the skills of expert software developers in detail.
Skills of Expert Software Developers
Expert developers possess the following skills, among others:
1. Programming Languages and Tools
An expert software developer can write maintainable and clean code in at least one programming language, and tech stack, and have proficiency in the related platforms and frameworks.
For example, expert Java developers are familiar with Java platforms, including Java SE (standard edition) and Java EE (enterprise edition), moreover, they have relevant experience with multiple application frameworks, like Spring, Hibernate, Grails, etc., to build web and mobile applications.
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2. Software Development Methodologies
Expert developers are familiar with multiple software development methodologies. While a few software applications with fixed specification requirements work well with the waterfall model, most follow the agile development process.
Expert software developer utilizes multiple agile methodologies, which help them efficiently plan and execute the software development lifecycle.
According to the Scrum Master Trends Report, 81% of users use Scrum with agile practices, like Kanban, Xtreme Programming, etc.
Expert developers adopt a hybrid software development approach where iteration or sprint-based scrum development helps expert developers break down and prioritize development tasks while ensuring faster time-to-market.
Kanban boards help them incorporate user requirements into the development process while giving complete visibility into the software development process.
3. Software Debugging and Testing
Years of coding make developers experts in code debugging and troubleshooting. They can quickly analyze code and detect bugs. They are able to effectively utilize debuggers that come with IDEs (Integrated development environments).
Software debugging skills help them conduct code review sessions, especially for junior developers.
Software testing is an essential stage of the software development lifecycle, and expert developers contribute significantly here. They are skilled in implementing test cases to ensure each code module or app functionality works accurately separately and together.
Senior developers help conduct unit testing, integration testing, system testing, etc., along with dedicated app testers.
For this, expert developers are skilled in software testing tools, like Selenium for web applications, Appium for mobile apps, etc., and familiar with the latest testing trends, like automated testing, cloud-based testing, etc.
4. Software Architectures
Expert developers have experience working on multiple software architectures and design patterns. They can design a software app using the most suitable architecture, such as
- Service-oriented architecture to build software features as separate services that communicate over a protocol like HTTP;
- Event-driven architecture for real-time or IoT-based applications where software responds to messages sent by other services;
- Client-server architecture help design web applications, etc.
Another software design expertise of specialized developers is in design patterns. Software design patterns are solutions to software design problems that developers often encounter.
Expert developers use these design patterns, such as singleton, model-view-controller, layered, etc., to develop scalable, maintainable, and adaptable software.
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5. Database Design
Expert developers possess a range of database design and development skills. They are familiar with multiple database design models that fulfill different data requirements.
They are proficient in database modeling techniques, such as entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, data flow diagrams, etc.
Expert developers are also well-versed in data organization via normalization techniques to reduce data redundancy, ensure data integrity, and minimize database anomalies.
They are also skilled in database solutions performance tuning using indexes, optimization of database queries, stored procedures, etc., to improve database response time.
Expert software developers are proficient in SQL programming. They can write complex queries, triggers, functions, etc., for database transactions and data manipulation.
They are familiar with SQL and No-SQL database technologies, like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Cassandra, MongoDB, etc.
Data warehousing is another prominent skill of expert developers. They can design and develop data warehouses using techniques like ETL (extract-transform-load), OLAP (online analytical processing), etc.
6. Development and Operations
Expert developers are skilled in development and operations or DevOps practices. These DevOps practices allow them to improve the efficiency of the software development process while adopting a collaborative approach to software development and deployment.
Expert developers are familiar with DevOps techniques, such as:
- Continuous integration/continuous delivery by configuring deployment pipelines;
- Infrastructure-as-a-code, where developers automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of infrastructure resources
- Containerization, where developers package and deploy containerized applications in production environments to manage workloads.
- Monitoring and logging to understand and resolve issues in production environments, etc.
7. Software Documentation
Expert developers have experience writing clear and concise documentation that serves various purposes. Software documentation that expert developers are proficient in writing includes the following:
- Technical documentation is for other developers who will develop or maintain the software in the future. It explains software architecture, design, data structures, etc.;
- User documentation helps users understand how to operate the software and utilize its features. It includes user guides, tutorials, help documentation, etc.;
- Code documentation helps other developers understand the working of each code module. It includes comments in the source code;
- API documentation describes using application user interfaces (APIs) for other developers who use your APIs. It provides information about API parameters, response values, etc.;
- Design documentation is of various types, like architectural diagrams that illustrate the structure of software systems, flow charts that visually represent the logical flow of software functions, etc.
8. Problem-Solving
Expert developers have a range of problem-solving skills that help them design and develop complex software applications. Some of these skills for experienced developers include the following:
- Analytical thinking helps developers identify complex problems and devise solutions for them;
- Creativity helps experienced developers build innovative software solutions;
- Attention to detail is necessary to examine minute details in software designs, identify tricky and little bugs in app code that could lead to big problems, and write high-quality code.
9. Communication and Collaboration
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Expert developers can communicate effectively with varied audiences, including product owners, stakeholders, end-users, developers, etc. They can explain complex and technical concepts in easy terms to non-technical people.
Expert developers are also team players. They can work effortlessly with developers and designers on a team to build a software product.
They collaborate by sharing their ideas, mentoring junior team members, giving room to others with different work approaches, etc., while working on the same code base.
10. Continuous Learning
Lastly, expert developers are continuously learning new technologies and tools. They are motivated to keep themselves up-to-date with cutting-edge technologies and integrate them into software solutions to build next-level applications.
For example, in today’s age, expert developers are keen to learn about machine learning, virtual reality, blockchain, etc.
Looking to Hire an Expert Developer?
Expert developers are hard to find but not impossible. If you look at the right place, you could find software developers with specialized skills in technology stacks and advanced expertise in software architectures, design patterns, data modeling, etc.
Moreover, these expert developers possess excellent soft skills, such as good verbal and written communication, team collaboration, time management, etc.
DevTeam.Space can provide you with expert software developers with the right skills and expertise in niche technologies and domain knowledge. The vetting process ensures our developers’ skills and experiences in developing software applications for a wide range of industries.
Moreover, all our developers follow an AI-based agile development process that streamlines communication within the development team and with product owners via task assignments, and progress tracking by sending daily and weekly statuses, etc.
If you plan to partner with our expert software engineers, you can write us your initial project specifications via this quick form. One of our account managers will get back to you to discuss how our expert developers can help you build a great software product.
FAQs
Software developers progress in their careers as junior, mid-level, and senior developers. Junior developers are entry-level developers with little to no experience in developing software for the industry, developers with a mid-level developer position have 3 to 5 years of experience building industry-level software applications, and senior developers have almost 10 years of experience as full-time developers in various software projects like eCommerce development, mobile app development, etc.
An expert developer has comprehensive knowledge, technical skills, and experience in developing software applications for several business domains and global companies while working with numerous programming languages, tools, design patterns, etc. The job description during the hiring process of an expert developer includes working with application architectures, collaborating with the support team, having excellent communication skills, etc.
Expert developers are highly-experienced software engineers who can comment on the business and technical aspects of a software product. They share their technical expertise with senior developers and help resolve technical issues. Senior developers are competent developers with experience building several software solutions and often work as team leads guiding mid-level and junior developers.
Alexey Semeney
Founder of DevTeam.Space
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Alexey is the founder of DevTeam.Space. He is award nominee among TOP 26 mentors of FI's 'Global Startup Mentor Awards'.
Alexey is Expert Startup Review Panel member and advices the oldest angel investment group in Silicon Valley on products investment deals.