How to Hire a VR Developer — The Ultimate Checklist

Want to know how to hire a VR developer?

You’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will answer the most popular and exciting questions about hiring VR developers: How much does it cost to hire a VR developer? How much do VR developers make? Is there a demand for VR developers?

How much does it cost to hire a VR developer in the United States?

The average cost of hiring a VR developer in the United States is $65-$250 per hour, depending on the skills and experience of the specific developer.

In this article

1. How to Hire a VR Developer?
2. Who to Hire as a VR Developer? Freelancers vs. Field Expert Teams
3. Planning to Hire a Virtual Reality Developer for Your VR Project?
4. FAQs on How to Hire VR Developers

According to a study, “The global AR and VR market is expected to grow over $250 billion by 2028.” As you would expect, because of the growing market for VR, there is a high demand for hiring a VR developer. The following reports on the job market illustrate this:

• US businesses find it hard to hire a VR developer, according to this CNBC report.
• A Quartz report puts VR development skills right at the top of skills in high demand.

This means there is a huge requirement for VR developers out there. Finding the right ones can be challenging.

DevTeam.Space offers software engineers with expertise in many areas, including virtual reality. To get a complimentary discovery call and preliminary estimation of your VR project cost, drop a couple of lines via this short form. You can learn more about our experience by visiting our client page.

How to Hire a VR Developer?

I will now explain the skills and competencies you should look for to hire a VR developer, and these are as follows:

1. Deep knowledge of software development life cycle (SDLC) models

A VR app development project can be a high-stakes project in the organization with very high visibility; moreover, it can also be a project to develop customer-facing web and mobile VR apps. Competent VR developers should have in-depth knowledge of the following SDLC models:

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• Waterfall: High-stakes projects would typically have well-defined requirements and such projects require thorough reviews after key milestones. The waterfall is the right model for such projects, with phases like requirements analysis, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance.
• Agile: The business might launch customer-facing web and mobile apps as “Minimum Viable Products” (MVPs) and enhance them based on market feedback. This calls for iterative development, and Agile is more suitable for such projects.

At DevTeam.Space, we have considerable expertise with key SDLC models, and I have explained these models in “What is software development life cycle and what do you plan for?”.

2. Experience in working with prominent managed cloud services platforms

Businesses are increasingly gravitating towards managed cloud service platforms since they can innovate at scale and have a predictable cost model. VR developers you hire should have hands-on experience with the following prominent cloud offerings:

• Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering from AWS, and many businesses use this solution to build their apps. AWS has considerable cloud capabilities; however, using an IaaS platform requires more work since the provider only manages the infrastructure.
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is the Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering from AWS, and here, AWS manages cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, middleware, operating systems, and runtime environments. VR developers you hire should have experience with integrating 3^rd party APIs, databases, DevOps services, etc.
• AWS Amplify: This is the Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) offering from AWS. It can help the project team to focus on the design and development of the front end since they don‘t need to develop and manage the mobile backend.

3. Expertise with popular VR SDKs/APIs:

SDKs and APIs help incorporate key features into your app; therefore, you can expedite your project. The good news is that you have several VR SDK/API solutions to fast-track your development, and you should hire experienced developers.

Look for developers who know the following VR SDKs/APIs:

• Oculus VR SDKs: Oculus is a popular provider of VR platforms, and the company offers SDKs for developing VR apps for systems like Oculus Rift S, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Go. More information about its SDKs is available here.
• Google VR SDKs: Google VR SDKs are available for several platforms, e.g., Android, iOS, Unity, and Unreal. These SDKs can be downloaded from here, and the documentation for them is available here.

4. Node.js skills

You will very likely launch a web app as part of your VR app development project, and Node.js is a great runtime environment for web app development. This runtime environment has many advantages, e.g.:

• Node.js is open-source, and a thriving developer community contributes plenty of open-source, sharable tools and frameworks for this runtime environment. Developers using Node.js typically have high productivity due to this.
• Node.js supports asynchronous, event-driven programming, and this improves the scalability of the app. Scalability should be an important consideration for virtual reality apps.
• This runtime environment is good for streaming, and for a VR app development project, this represents a key advantage.
• JavaScript is a popular language that many programmers know. Node.js is based on JavaScript, and this drives high productivity for developers.
• Web apps developed with Node.js are performant.
• Modern NoSQL databases like MongoDB use JavaScript; therefore, it‘s easy to use them with Node.js.

We at DevTeam.Space have significant expertise with Node.js, as I have earlier explained in “10 great tools for Node.Js software development”.

5. Experience in developing scalable web apps

As I mentioned, a VR app needs to scale well; therefore, you should look to hire VR app developers with a credible track record of building scalable web apps. This requires the following expertise:

• First of all, programmers should know how to define scalability objectives using the right metrics.
• Scaling a web app requires using the right Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions, and developers should know how to use them.
• Using the right PaaS platform is key. You can hire programmers who are familiar with the popular AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
• When you form your team, look for IT architects with deep knowledge of architectural patterns since selecting the right pattern is key for web app scalability.
• Developers should know the right frameworks to help scale web apps. For this project involving Node.js, I recommend using Express.js, which is a lightweight framework that improves scalability.
• Using the right database is important for developing web apps that scale. PostgreSQL is an RDBMS that helps to scale apps, and MongoDB is a good NoSQL database option for scaling. Developers you hire should have expertise in these areas.

Web development with a focus on scalable web apps is a key area of expertise for us at DevTeam.Space, as I have earlier explained in “How to build a scalable web application?”.

6. UI design expertise

You will need to hire UI designers for a VR app development project; therefore, you should look for designers with experience in the following:

• Web app UI design: Designers should know the rules for great web UI design, as explained in “10 rules of good UI design to follow on every web design project”.
• Android app UI design: UI designers should know the Material Design guidelines since Android apps must conform to these.
• iOS app UI design: Apple uses the Human Interface Guidelines; therefore, UI designers should know these.
• There are specific guidelines for designing a VR app UI, e.g., “Designing user experience for Virtual Reality (VR) applications”. UI designers should be familiar with them.

7. Experience with Android app development

The VR app development project will most likely involve an Android app development; therefore, you should look for Android developers with the following expertise:

• Developers should know how to code an Android app using Java.
• They should also know how to use Android Studio, i.e., the popular IDE for Android development.

8. iOS app development expertise

You will likely target iOS platforms also for your VR app; therefore, you should hire iOS developers with the following expertise:

• They should have experience with Objective-C, which has been the mainstay of developing apps on Apple platforms for a long. Many developers working on Apple’s platforms know this language, and Objective-C has powerful features. We at DevTeam.Space have considerable expertise with this language, as I have explained in “How to convert an app from Swift to Objective-C?”.
• Programmers you hire should be familiar with Xcode, i.e., the popular IDE for developing apps for Apple’s platforms.

9. Experience with testing frameworks

You need to hire testers for this project; therefore, look for the following expertise:

• Testers should know how to use popular open-source testing frameworks like Selenium.
• They should be familiar with Espresso, which is a popular framework for testing Android apps.
• Testers also need experience with XCTest, which is used to test iOS apps.
• Testing with a wide range of browsers and mobile devices is important; therefore, testers should be conversant with testing solutions like pCloudy. pCloudy offers a wide range of browsers and mobile devices on the Cloud.

10. DevOps expertise

You will need competent DevOps engineers for this VR app development project. Since I recommended AWS platforms like Elastic Beanstalk and Amplify for this project, you should look for DevOps engineers with experience in AWS DevOps tools and infrastructure.

11. The willingness and capability to collaborate

Modern-day software development projects take place in fast-paced environments, and a VR app development project won‘t be an exception. An effective Continuous Integration (CI) environment is key for the success of such projects since it enables analyzing, building, testing, and deploying an application continuously.

Building an effective CI environment requires modern DevOps tools; however, tools can never do the job fully! An effective CI environment requires close collaboration between developers, testers, DevOps engineers, and the scrum master.

Developers, testers, and DevOps engineers you hire must be willing to collaborate; moreover, they must have the maturity and capability to do so.

Read more about the importance of this in “5 common pitfalls of CI/CD—and how to avoid them”.

12. 3D Modelling and VR Environment Creation

Virtual reality developers need to have good knowledge of 3D animation software. Visualization and the ability to understand 3D models are a must. After all, it is the developer’s job to get the 3D environments created by the team to work on the user’s VR equipment. 

13. Experience in Creating VR Games

Virtual reality is a technology that is often found in game apps. Chances are that if you’re looking for VR developers, you have a VR game app in mind to build. A specialist with experience in creating those virtual worlds modern games are packed with will be better suited for the role of a VR game developer.

To create apps that offer immersive experiences, your VR developer should be familiar with major game design and development tools. Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, and O3DE are all examples of contemporary game engines widely used by developers who specialize in creating game apps.

Since I’ve touched upon the game development topic, more technical skills should be mentioned in this context. A VR game developer should have profound knowledge of C, C#, or C++ programming languages, considered the industry standard.

Everything up to and including game engine optimization is part of the role that all members of the VR development team are involved in. Many developers have experience creating mixed-reality AR applications, which can be a great help.

Who to Hire as a VR Developer? Freelancers vs. Expert Teams

I have explained the skills and competencies you should seek; however, you must decide whether to hire freelancers or full-time developers. VR app development projects tend to be high-visibility, and you would want to mitigate delivery risks.

Hiring freelancers would mean hiring individuals, and you must integrate their work. This requires far more project management effort than it would require if you work with an expert development team.

You will also need to manage the schedule of individual freelancers; therefore, you need to mitigate the risks of freelancers taking unplanned time-offs.

In the case of an expert development team, the software development company providing this team takes accountability for mitigating such risks, as I have explained in “Dedicated vs Freelance Software Development Teams: A Review”.

Planning to Hire a Virtual Reality Developer for Your VR Project?

VR is making a big impact in the world of business. Marketing campaigns have benefited from VR since the technology allows new modes of campaigns according to experts.

Large enterprises are increasingly using VR to train their employees on key hands-on business operations, while industries such as healthcare are using it for vital ‘hands-on’ training.

While I have explained various aspects of hiring virtual reality app developers in this article, a successful VR app development project requires much more than just developers.

VR technology is changing at such a fast pace that it is important to choose developers with lots of VR experience and with skill sets in everything from creating accurate 3D models to creating software for all the latest hardware, such as a VR headset like the Gear VR, Microsoft VR Hololens, and the Google Cardboard.

The process can get complex when creating VR apps; therefore, you might need end-to-end project management support. Consider engaging a reputed software development company and its virtual reality developers for such projects.

Read our guide “How to find the best software development company?” for more information or simply fill out our project specification page and a dedicated account manager will get back to you to show you how DevTeam.Space’s top VR developers can solve your problems for you.

All of our VR/AR developers have years of experience creating top VR applications that deliver the best virtual reality experiences.

DevTeam.Space is an innovative American software development company with over 99% project success rate. DevTeam.Space builds reliable and scalable custom software applications, mobile apps, websites, live-streaming software applications, speech recognition systems, ChatGPT and AI-powered solutions, and IoT solutions and conducts complex software integrations for various industries, including finance, hospitality, healthcare, music, entertainment, gaming, e-commerce, banking, construction, and education software solutions on time and budget.

DevTeam.Space supports its clients with business analysts and dedicated tech account managers who monitor tech innovations and new developments and help our clients design, architect, and develop applications that will be relevant and easily upgradeable in the years to come.

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FAQs on How to Hire VR Developers