Backend developer: Current industry expectations and growth opportunities

This resource helps you keep tabs on the backend development landscape. You'll stay updated on the current industry expectations of the backend development roles in different tech stacks, including being notified of growth opportunities.

This page will be actively updated as I browse through different backend developer job listings in addition to keeping tabs on the changing technology landscape.

Skills required of a backend developer

  • Design and develop scalable, reliable and maintainable backend services, including APIs and microservices, in alignment with the business requirements

  • Ability to create or contribute to low-level and high-level design documents

  • Ability to write reliable, maintainable and clean code with optimum test coverage

  • Knowledge of data structures and algorithms

  • Knowledge of object-oriented programming and design patterns

  • Strong hands-on experience with a specific backend programming language, associated frameworks and the stack

  • Experience with version control tools like Git

  • Knowledge of cloud computing

  • Experience with designing and deploying services for the cloud leveraging cloud-native technologies like Docker and Kubernetes

  • Experience with continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment/delivery (CD)

  • Experience with databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB

  • Experience with implementing observability for your service

  • Experience with code quality analysis and build tools

  • Understanding of Linux/Unix systems

  • Familiarity with agile software development methodology

  • Can act as an individual contributor, taking full ownership of their code from design to deployment.

  • Not all, but a few job openings focus on TDD (Test-driven development) and BDD (Behavior-driven development)

The skills above are common to all backend programming languages, be it Java, Python, Go, NodeJS, and more. Now, let's delve further into the industry expectations of backend developers in specific programming languages.

Java developer

  • Spring framework, Spring Boot (Spring framework reigns the Java development realm)

  • Hibernate (ORM)

  • Implementing robust exception-handling patterns and error-management strategies

  • Maven/Gradle as build automation tools.

  • Strong understanding of JDK (A good percentage of job openings stress this. A discussion on this coming soon)

  • Jenkins for CI/CD automation

  • JUnit, TestNG, Mockito

  • The Java 8 version is what most companies have standardized in their job descriptions. Newer versions are a good to have.

Python developer

  • Though there are quite a number of popular Python frameworks, the most appearing in the job descriptions are Django, Flask, and FastAPI

  • SQLAlchemy, Django ORM as ORMs

  • Celery for asynchronous processing and task scheduling

  • pytest for testing

Python is heavily used in AI/ML and data engineering use cases, but I am not listing them here since this post focuses on backend web services development. All those use cases will be discussed in another post covering data engineering and data science.

NodeJS developer

  • TypeScript knowledge is a requirement in most job openings.

  • The frameworks that appear most are ExpressJS, NestJS, Fastify, Koa, and Hapi.

  • Knowledge of ORMs: Prisma, Mongoose.

  • Knowledge of WebRTC, Socket.io (This requirement appears most in the job listings of companies working on video conferencing apps, gaming, multiplayer collaboration tools, streaming services and secure communication platforms)

  • Good working knowledge of Node.js architecture (A detailed discussion on this coming soon)

  • Understanding the nature of asynchronous programming and its quirks and workarounds

  • Solid JSON experience (A small percentage of jobs have this requirement. This primarily entails creating, testing, and deploying automated workflows and tools using JSON. A discussion on this coming soon)

  • Working knowledge of node.js package management and the tools ecosystem

  • Good understanding of server-side templating languages and server-side CSS pre-processors

  • UnitJS, Mocha, Chai, and Jest for testing

Furthermore, the NodeJS job openings have significant overlap in requirements with the MERN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, NodeJS) stack job listings.

This entails knowledge of frontend technologies (React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Tailwind, Bootstrap, and more) along with NodeJS and having a strong understanding of web development and site performance fundamentals. We will have a detailed discussion on this in the frontend developer industry expectations post.

Golang developer

  • Frameworks Gin, Echo, Fiber, Chi. Gin has the highest number of occurrences in job listings.

  • GORM (ORM)

  • Knowledge of Gorilla Mux, Go-Chi, Go-Kit

  • Strong understanding of Golang architecture, including Golang modules and packages.

  • Strong knowledge of Go routines, channels, and concurrency patterns.

  • Proficient in the implementation of complex algorithms and concurrent executions using Go-routines, Channels and Mutexes.

  • Experience with Golang databases, including relational databases and NoSQL databases. (There are databases written in Go, such as CockroachDB, InfluxDB, etc., that are optimized for performance and distributed systems. However, experience with Golang databases is not a necessity but a good to have)

  • Testify, Ginkgo, GoMock for testing.

Industry expectations for C#, C++, Rust, ROR, Kotlin and other languages will be added soon.

Backend development specialized competencies

Besides the knowledge of the core tech stack there are job openings that look for backend developers with a specialized skill set.

Specializing in a specific skill or a certain area of backend development increases our value, as most developers have only a general understanding of the core tech stack without developing proficiency in specific areas.

The skills listed below are in high demand but in low supply, which naturally drives up the pay scale, in addition to cutting down the competition. Furthermore, detailed discussions on each one of them are coming soon:

  • Proficiency in multithreaded, concurrent and low-latency programming

  • Experience building event-driven and messaging systems with Kafka and related technologies

  • Ability to write scalable, immutable, and composable code with functional programming knowledge. (Functional programming knowledge is key in implementing data-intensive distributed systems)

  • Experience building high-performance data-intensive applications with distributed computing frameworks like Apache Spark, Hadoop and Kafka.

  • Strong understanding of distributed systems. Ability to optimize them for performance.

  • Experience with ElasticSearch and ELK stack for implementing search and observability

  • Systems programming, including knowledge of networking fundamentals. (You'll find this requirement in the backend engineer job listings of infrastructure-focused companies)

  • Experience with EIP (Enterprise Integration Patterns) and enterprise architecture. (These requirements are primarily for large-scale enterprise systems in domains such as finance and banking, telecom, healthcare and insurance, retail, and so on. Java reigns this space.)

  • There are dedicated job listings for GraphQL backend developers by companies that heavily use GraphQL for API development, microservices, and data fetching optimization. They need expertise in Apollo, Hasura, Prisma, Federation, Subscriptions (WebSockets), caching, and schema stitching.

  • Many backend developer jobs are tied to specific cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP, as companies often build and deploy their backend infrastructure within a certain cloud ecosystem. These roles expect hands-on experience with a specific cloud provider's services. Furthermore, getting cloud certifications of specific platforms can boost your job prospects.

  • Many backend developer jobs now include familiarity with AI models and related products (OpenAI API, Google Cloud AI, AWS Bedrock, Azure AI, LangChain, LangGraph, vector databases, etc.) as a requirement. This is to integrate GenAI SaaS into the existing backend systems.

Companies offering high-paying packages place a strong emphasis on these skills in their job requirements:

  • Code quality and test coverage

  • Computer science fundamentals: DSA, systems design, and OS and networking (if you are writing code for the infrastructure)

  • Projects you've worked on in the past

  • Being aware of what's going on in the industry and the ability to pick the right tech for a given use case and taking ownership of your work.

These high-paying job listings focus on your knowledge of the fundamentals and problem-solving ability as opposed to a specific tech stack. Detailed discussions on every point will be added soon to this resource.

Furthermore, in case you are overwhelmed reading the industry expectations :) don't be. Though the expectations are vast you need not know every little thing in detail. There is a specific route you can follow to minimize your grind and bag a sublime backend developer job in the industry.

I'll be discussing all that in the near future. If you wish to be notified of the new additions to this resource, you can subscribe to the newsletter.

Furthermore, don't forget to share this with your network for more reach. It will keep me motivated to update this resource actively. You can also follow me on X.

I'll see you around.