Wondering how the sausage is made at a technology company? Or who is making it?
If you’re on a non-technical sales, comm, or service team, the development team can be somewhat of a mystery. You’ll feel more comfortable and contribute at a higher level, though, if you have a basic understanding of the various developer roles.
The Front End Developer creates a website’s look and feel. He or she receives specs from a designer and writes code that makes the design come to life on the screen. A key challenge front end developers face is checking that the designs look as intended on any browser, as well as mobile.
The Back End Developer works very much “under the hood” of a website or platform. He or she creates the bones of the app, the core logic and architecture on which the platform is built. A backend developer integrates a wide array of databases, storage, email, and more.
The Dev Ops Engineer works with a set of practices and tools to increase the speed and reliability of the entire development infrastructure. That encompasses automating, testing, and event monitoring—and above all, creating a stable system to prevent outages.
The Full Stack Developer, as you might guess from the name, can do it all, with skill sets in both front and back end programming. In lay terms, this would be a generalist developer and he or she may be hired for versatility.
The Mobile Developer is knowledgeable about the specific systems for creating mobile apps, which can be very different from those of a web app. They tend to specialize in either iOS or Android.
These developer roles may all come under the guidance of a Chief Technology Officer, who in smaller companies may also pitch in to code. Two other key non-developer roles complete the product team and interface with the developers.
The Product Manager is perhaps the most integrative role in any technology company. The product manager assesses the needs of the business as communicated by the sales or executive team, as well as customers. He or she then looks at the dev team’s capacity and creates a roadmap that lays out which features will be built and when.
The UX/UI Designer decides how a website or app will be structured and how it will look for the customer to have the best possible experience with the product. Just as important as the graphic interface is the intuitive and simple path from screen to screen. UX stands for User Experience and focuses on the flows and architecture of the app. UI stands for User Interface and focuses on the brand’s look and feel. Many designers do both UX and UI, with some specializing in one or the other.
Once you understand who’s doing what to build a technology product, you have both an appreciation of the collaboration needed, and the ability to understand how your own role may affect their work.