As software development gathers momentum thanks to escalating customer demands and compliance requirements, you need a ‘lieutenant’ that can undertake most, if not all duties for your project. Full stack software engineers, thanks to combined front and backend expertise, can be an ideal addition.
Here, we discuss what full stack development is, its advantages, and how you can hire the right person for the role.
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What is full stack development?
Full stack development refers to developing both the front and backends of a software. While the frontend refers to the UI as well as any other elements that a user interacts with, backend components include servers, storage, databases and security systems. Different languages are used each for front and backend development, which are:
- Frontend languages:
- Backend languages:
Full stack developers are constantly in demand thanks to their all-round expertise, thereby enabling software development outsourcing companies to always be on the lookout especially in the wake of rapid client growth, or for developing new systems with AI and machine learning.
What are the advantages of full stack development?
Smaller teams, faster deliverables
By undertaking all front and backend requirements, a full stack engineer is equipped to handle most, if not all areas pertaining to building, configuring and running code. This is particularly beneficial for teams that are working on a new concept, and are in their infancy. However, growing teams benefit from full stack engineers as they have complete knowledge of both the front and backends, thereby making bug fixing and update releases faster.
Additionally, full stack engineers can scale at a much quicker pace when new capabilities need to be included or when security needs to be tightened across network perimeters, as they can single handedly cater to all required tasks without having to coordinate with multiple different developers across the team.
Cost-effective
When you are looking to hire a developer for a project, you may consider hiring someone with less skills and experience, especially if you are on a tight budget. However, an experienced full stack developer, while being more expensive in the short run due to higher remuneration expectations on their part, will immensely benefit your business in the long run.
Owing to their skills across both front and backend development, a full stack engineer that’s part of your project can scale as well as troubleshoot any issues within shorter turnaround times, therefore helping your business save on the costs, time and effort otherwise associated to hire multiple developers for doing the same work.
Heightened quality of skills and insights
Senior full stack engineers are more than just software developers, as they can also specialise in strategic decisions pertaining to what’s being built. This is especially valuable for ongoing, long term projects, as teams shall now have a single go-to source of in-depth knowledge pertaining to the application at hand, as time progresses.
With their holistic expertise, stringent attention to detail and a job role that incentivises them to constantly innovate for improved problem solving, full stack engineers can embrace leadership roles, such as that of an IT Director and CTO.
If your company is growing fast enough to open up such opportunities, considering any full stack engineers you may already have in your team is highly valuable, as they may be reliable team members that you can pass the position to, sans any of the doubt that may otherwise prevail when hiring someone brand new for such high, executive roles.
How to hire full stack developers for your software project
In general, software outsourcing services are a great source to hire remote developers for any business requirement. Likewise, if you partner with a software outsourcing company, you can have them search for and hire a full stack engineer that is suitable for the unique needs of your business.
As software development teams now typically function on a remote basis, you also need to ensure that your new hire is able to assimilate well in a distributed work environment, communicate clearly, and embrace autonomy in order to meet deadlines and ad hoc requests alike. In order to find the best full stack engineer for your business needs, consider following the below step-by-step process to search for, interview and shortlist the right candidate(s).
Assess what your project truly needs
To understand the level of expertise and experience that your full stack engineer needs to have, you need to assess the current situation of your project as a whole, first. Start by asking your software development team what is lacking, if any bottlenecks exist, or whether any KPIs are constantly falling short.
Any feedback pertaining to technical requirements is also bound to surface during this discussion, so make note of all this to finally build a list of criteria that your full stack engineer needs to possess.
Next, this criteria can make it into the final job ad, along with a set of roles and responsibilities that are also built based on said criteria list.
Headhunt and shortlist
Once you’ve put word out and gathered a list of CVs for consideration, shortlist your candidates by assessing their skills with technical assignments, but also by gauging the quality of their skills for communication, collaboration, resourcefulness and problem solving. Senior team members in your software development team, such as project managers, should be able to determine the right set of questions to ask for assessing soft skills – but this can also be gauged when coordinating for the technical assessment.
For example, if you are looking to hire developers for startup projects, you need to be transparent about the possibility of constrained resources and even structure, owing to limited budgets. This shall, in turn, help you filter candidates that are willing to embrace such challenges, and also help save precious time along the way.
Conduct regular performance evaluations
Once you’ve made your selection for a full stack engineer to add to your team, establish regular performance evaluations to determine the overall quality of their work, as well as their level of contribution to your project.
This is something that can even be observed in due course of daily duties; how ideas and problems are communicated, as well as the level of cross-collaboration they do to gather feedback and fix issues can determine whether they are a valuable addition to your team, or if they’d require more training to get up to par.
Summing it all up…
Full stack developers are essential for most software projects, and hiring one requires a thorough assessment before a job ad is finally shared with the world. By choosing the right candidate for your team, a full stack engineer can, with their all-round front and backend development expertise, be a go-to source for all development requirements. In turn, this helps minimise overheads, as well as the costs associated with them – while enabling full stack engineers to embrace leadership roles within the team.