Last Updated on 2024-10-11
As owners, our employees are our best asset and our top priority. When working with them, we need to know our developers based on their level of experience. Their background in the industry plays an important role when developing your product.
Their level of expertise also determines and influences the speed of development. Let’s get on with comparing the differences between junior, mid, and senior software developers.
Related Video: Building a Successful Software Team
What is a software developer?
A software developer performs all phases of the software development process โ the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Programmer, software analyst, and software engineer are job titles with similar meanings that are often used to call a developer.
A developer does not necessarily handle all the stages of the software development process. In the development environment of large companies, a developer may only work on one to two stages of the development process while other developers will handle the other stages.
But in smaller companies, one or a few developers will completely handle all the phases of the development process.
Job Responsibilities of a Software Developer
A software developer is responsible for the development, design, and implementation of new or revised software products. They will usually do the following roles:
- Research, design, implement, and manage software programs, and test and evaluate new programs
- Analyze the needs of the users of the specific software and design, develop, and test the software to meet those needs
- Identify and develop areas for revisions in current software programs and systems. The developer will also maintain and recommend the upgrades needed for those programs and systems. The developer will also practice software maintenance and testing to ensure that the software continues to operate normally.
- Determine operational practicality and develop quality assurance procedures for the software
- Deploy the necessary processes, metrics, and tools for the software
- Coordinate and work with other developers, business and system analysts, and UX designers who are involved with the software
- Create diagrams and models that will show to other programmers the code needed for an application
- Document every facet of the software as a reference for further maintenance and upgrades
Differences Between Junior, Mid-Level, and Senior Developers
IT company owners and HR recruiters in the IT industry have a criterion in hiring software developers. They would hire them based on the classification of developers they need. Developers are classified as junior, mid-level, and senior.
The differences between these three classifications involve their years of work experience, level of expertise, and scope of responsibilities.
The following are some of the differences between junior, mid-level, and senior developers:
- Junior developer
- Has Zero to two years of work experience
- Has basic knowledge about IT from a software and hardware perspective, and computer programming basics
- Knows computer programming basics and its tools
- Knows at least one programming language with the ability to write basic code
- Has the ability to repair small, less significant bugs or errors in software, and work on internal features and tools of the software
- Mid-level developer
- Has two to four years of experience and has already participated in several projects
- Has basic skills in debugging software
- Is competent in all or some stages of the systems development life cycle โ analysis, design, development and testing, implementation, documentation, and evaluation
- Demonstrates the initiative and method for solving different problems, and propose effective solutions for those problems
- Sets up a development environment on their own, and has the ability to mentor a team of junior developers
- Performs tasks for several projects at the same time
- Revises software code to make it more efficient and be able to detect bugs in the code
- Creates and writes simple unit tests
- Senior developer
- Has five to eight years of experience including extensive experience in solving problems of varying complexities
- Has the ability to experiment and test solutions for problems, validate assumptions for them, and the ability to associate one idea to another to reach a solution
- Has the trait to consistently improve the quality and structure of the previously written code
- Communicates with clients about the business processes of their projects and has the ability to transform business processes into programming code
- Mentors the junior and mid-level developers of the team, and can designate tasks to team members in a balanced and effective manner
- Comprehends the full scope of a project and make the best suggestions and methods to develop, test, implement, and maintain a project
- Coaches junior developers and can manage a team doing simple to complicated tasks
- Performs regular reviews on code done by less experienced developers and offer feedback and suggestions for those code
- Independently solves various problems and rectify complicated problems through the application of design patterns
- Creates and writes complicated tests
Advantages of Offshoring Your Developers from Full Scale
If you are a company owner and you need software developers, why not offshore your developers from Cebu City, Philippines? Cebu City is one of the best offshoring destinations in the Philippines.
It will be easier for you to offshore your developers from the Philippines if you want to hire an offshore services company who can do the screening and recruitment process for you. Also, a good company will be able to provide you with highly skilled and experienced developers.
Our companyโFull Scaleโis one of the most established and reputable offshore service providers in Cebu. These are some of the advantages of offshoring your software developers from Full Scale:
- Our comprehensive recruitment process involves online technical exams, face-to-face interviews with our team leaders or project managers, and certification processes to ensure that we hire only the best developers for your company.
- The developer teams are an ideal mix of junior, mid-level, and senior developers. Most of them have extensive working experiences in their specific skills and have worked for some of the most established, reputable IT companies in Cebu.
- We have developers skilled in junior and senior .NET, junior and senior Full Stack PHP, junior and senior Front-end, Ruby on Rails, Python, C++, iOS, Android, React, Xamarin, QA testing, and test automation, and other IT technologies.
- We have the required office facilities with modern IT equipment and infrastructure to support your development team.
If you have decided to offshore your developers from Cebu City, Philippines, then your next step is to choose us, Full Scale, as your offshore service provider. We will not only treat you as our client but as a valuable business partner. Our partnership will provide mutual benefits for us and your business.
We can work together to achieve your business goals by providing you with an offshore team of highly skilled and experienced developers with proven track records of successful web development projects.
In fact, we have years of successful partnerships with established companies like GigaBook and Stackify. We have helped them establish their offshoring operations in Cebu City. Contact us to know more about our all-inclusive offshore services to help grow your business.
Matt Watson is a serial tech entrepreneur who has started four companies and had a nine-figure exit. He was the founder and CTO of VinSolutions, the #1 CRM software used in today’s automotive industry. He has over twenty years of experience working as a tech CTO and building cutting-edge SaaS solutions.
As the CEO of Full Scale, he has helped over 100 tech companies build their software services and development teams. Full Scale specializes in helping tech companies grow by augmenting their in-house teams with software development talent from the Philippines.
Matt hosts Startup Hustle, a top podcast about entrepreneurship with over 6 million downloads. He has a wealth of knowledge about startups and business from his personal experience and from interviewing hundreds of other entrepreneurs.