Top 6 Career Paths for Young Software Developers
Are you in your final year of Computer Science Engineering and still confused about what you want to do ahead after college?
Or are you just not aware of what you could do with everything you learned at your professional Engineering degree program?
Or are you just curious about what are the possible career paths available for young developers out there and want to know the necessary requirements?
If you answered yes to even one question, you came to the right place!
Here’s a list of top 6 career paths for available if you are just getting started with your professional life.
Don’t worry if you don't know how to get started or whether it will suit you as the skills it takes to get to each level, let it be beginner, intermediate or expert level, along with what type of personality each path requires has been mentioned as well.
1. Frontend Developer
A frontend developer is an engineer who writes the client-side code that is the code which defines the environment of a user. They write the code responsible for the graphical interface of an application and define how an application looks and how a user interacts with an application.
Will it suit your personality?
If you consider yourself a creative person who is interested in designing a layout, a colour palette and typography of an application, this role would be the perfect match for you.
Beginner Track
A beginner frontend developer should know the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Along with these, they should be familiar with the concept of DOM manipulation.
Intermediate Track
An intermediate frontend developer should be comfortable with any one CSS framework like Bootstrap, Tailwind or Material design. Along with this, they should also know a Javascript framework like React, Angular or Vue.
Expert Track
An expert frontend developer should not only be able to design an application for a web browser but for any platform like a mobile application or a desktop application. This is possible by using native webviews technologies like Reactnative or Flutter for mobile, Electron or NW.JS for desktop.
2. Backend Developer
A backend developer is an engineer who writes a server-side code that is the code which defines what happens when a user interacts with the application and then the application performs certain calculations to show a result to the user. They write the code responsible for these calculations often fetched from a server.
Will it suit your personality?
If you consider yourself a highly analytical person who is good at making logic so that your application functions properly, this role would be perfect for you. Apart from creating a working logic backend developers are responsible for making an application faster and efficient.
Beginner Track
A beginner backend developer must know the basics of how to write an algorithm in any programming language, how to store, fetch and manipulate data using any Database management system using SQL or NoSQL technologies and the basics of how frontend developers work.
Intermediate Track
An intermediate backend developer may choose a framework based on the programming language they choose. For example Express for NodeJs, Laravel for PHP or Django for Python. They should also know how to create RESTful APIs.
Expert Track
An expert backend developer should be very well versed with all the topics used mentioned for beginner and intermediate levels. They should have a good knowledge of how web servers like Apache or Nginx work. They may also dive deep into GraphQL Databases to query complex databases.
3. Full-Stack Developer
A full-stack developer is an engineer who writes code for both client-side and server-side of an application. They are hybrid of frontend developers and backend developers. This means that they are comfortable with projects which involve complex algorithms and the visual parts of an application.
Will it suit your personality?
If you find yourself often looking into the future and planning for it in the present, this position will suit you. Full-stack developers are often involved in the planning phase of a project and guide a team of frontend and backend developers helping them create a perfect architecture.
Expertise
There are no levels in full-stack developers as they should know both frontend development and backend development. They are often found to specialise in one particular backend language and hence you would often see a job opening for these roles like Full-stack NodeJS developer, Full-stack Ruby developer or Full-stack Python Developer.
4. DevOps Engineer
A DevOps Engineer is an IT professional who takes care of the gap between software developers and system operators. They are responsible for keeping a check on how an application is built, interact with frontend, backend and full-stack developers, maintain versions of an application, automate testing, document an application and deploy an application on cloud systems.
Will it suit your personality?
If you are good at regulating tasks, managing teams, optimising tasks and you often find yourself understanding others and coming up with solutions for their needs, this path is definitely meant for you.
Beginner Track
A beginner DevOps engineer should know the basics of the Linux operating system to understand how an operating system manages hardware to allocate resources and the basics of any programming language just to understand the logic behind any automation.
Intermediate Track
An intermediate DevOps engineer should know how to manage the security of an application by learning different networking protocols and setting up different proxies with load balancing. They should also have a good knowledge of web servers and should know how to create an infrastructure for a web server.
Expert Track
An expert DevOps engineer should be very well versed with creating and testing the infrastructure of a web server. They should automate testing and integrate the changes needed automatically using CI/ CD tools like GitHub and Jenkins. They should be able to transfer all these functionalities to cloud servers by using any cloud design patterns.
5. Data Scientist
An engineer who works with huge datasets to retrieve valuable insights from them is called a Data Scientist. They are responsible for organizing huge data to structure them before storage, recognizing patterns using statistical tools and visualising them to display critical insights.
Will it suit your personality?
If you describe yourself as a curious critical thinker who looks into past data and forms pattern in them to come up to a new solution in future, this is exactly what data science has for you.
Beginner Track
A beginner data scientist needs to be familiar with the concepts of statistical mathematics, should be able to perform explanatory data analysis. A little bit of linear algebra will also help a lot.
Intermediate Track
An intermediate Data Scientist should have knowledge of different machine learning algorithms and techniques including but not limited to linear regression, logistic regression, decision trees, Naive Bayes, support vector machines. Knowing them is not going be enough but implementing them on real huge datasets should be able to give you enough experience.
Expert Track
An expert data scientist must be able to apply the above concepts to a pattern of problems like Time series, use matrix algebra to reduce complexity, neural networks, deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing and many other.
6. Security Engineer
The term cybersecurity isn't new by any means and Cybersecurity engineers have a big role in defending devices and networks from different types of wicked attacks.
Will it suit your personality?
If you have a superhero type of personality who wants to save the world from criminals and provide everyone with a sense of security. The world surely needs you to be a security engineer.
Beginner Track
A beginner Security Engineer should know about managing permissions, dealing with computer forensics, knowing about firewall, security breach protocols and penetration testing. They should also have good knowledge of networks and operating systems.
Intermediate Track
An intermediate Security engineer should be comfortable with risk assessment, reverse engineering applications, data protection and cryptography. This should be so that when a malicious hacker gets into the system they should be detected as soon as possible and blocked from performing attacks or contained in such a way that there is no harm to the system or leakage of any data.
Expert Track
An expert security engineer tries to figure ways of exploitation into the infrastructure and architecture of a cloud-based system or a low-level firmware vulnerability and provides a patch to fix it up or instead gives alternative ways of implementing new infrastructure and architecture to avoid any possible attacks into a system.
In the end its all about starting somewhere, even the expert was once a beginner…
That’s all for now folks. This is Vinayak Tekade from Coder’s Capsule signing off. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Looking forward to learn, teach and grow together. Check us out on Instagram for more similar content.
