Mobile App Developer Job Description
Introduction
Create a short introduction about your company and the things that make it an attractive option for highly skilled app developers. Include information about where the company has published in the past, achievements made, working culture, the perks and benefits that make it a great place to work.
If teams are distributed, flexible working is an option, or extensive travel is a part of the role then you should mention it here, alongside anything else that makes your company interesting or stand out from the crowd.
Example App Developer Job Description
We are looking for an app developer with iOS/Android/cross-platform framework experience. The ideal candidate will have published apps to the marketplace in the past. Having a portfolio of applications to demonstrate will be considered a significant bonus.
Strong working knowledge of iOS/Android native languages is a must, as is experience with RESTful APIs, Agile development methodologies, continuous integration, and testing tools.
Experience publishing apps build using React Native/Flutter/Cordova will be a distinct advantage.
If you’re passionate about performance and obsessive over UI, we want to hear from you! We want a team member who can turn code into user-friendly apps. As a mobile app developer, you’ll collaborate with internal teams to develop highly-functional mobile applications in a fast-paced environment.
Skills
- Proven application development experience in a commercial environment
- At least 3+ years of experience building mobile applications
- Extensive working knowledge of at least one mobile-native language (Swift, Java, Objective-C, Kotlin)
- Familiarity with OOP design principles
- Experience with agile development processes
- Experience with CI/CD
- Familiarity with JSON
- Experience with third-party libraries and APIs
- Demonstrable portfolio of apps (bonus if they are currently released on iOS or Android marketplace)
- Ability to perform well in a team environment
- Strong oral and written communication skills
- Extensive experience with conducting and participating in code reviews
- BSc degree in Computer Science, related field, or equivalent experience
Responsibilities
- Support the entire application lifecycle (concept, design, test, release, and support)
- Identify and plan new features
- Writing clean high-quality code
- Work collaboratively with engineers across a variety of domains and time zones
- Write unit and UI tests to identify issues
- Design interfaces to improve user experience
- Liaise with the product development team to plan new features
- Promote simple, elegant solutions that solve current problems while laying the groundwork for future development
- Ensure new and legacy applications meet quality standards
- Research and suggest new mobile products, applications and protocols
- Stay up-to-date with new technology trends
Key Steps for Hiring A Mobile App Developer
Before beginning the search for an app developer, you should be making critical decisions about who you’re going to hire and the role they’re going to play in the organization. Are they going to be a key member of a highly productive team? Or are they going to lead a team of their own to explore new areas of research?
These questions will help you tailor your hiring processes to find precisely the candidate you need and ensure they hit the ground running right from day one. Below, we’ve compiled the questions you need to ask and the decisions you need to make within your organisation before looking outward to begin the hiring process.
1. Decide on the App Developer Role You Plan to Fill
The first decision to make should be the easiest. Hiring mobile app developers is more than maximizing the number of people you can plug into the role. It’s about fitting the right puzzle piece into the right place at the right time.
Are you looking for a UI genius, a cross-platform wizard, a backend tinkerer, or a full-stack rock star? You might need all of the above. If you need to know more about all the different available skill sets, check out our article on the top mobile app frameworks. Identifying the precise kind of developer, or developers, you need will narrow down your search instantly.
Consider the technologies and tools you’ll expect new hires to know already and what skills you might expect them to learn over time. The more skills and technologies they come with, the larger the costs in hiring. Leaving a little space for learning and growth by hiring a new graduate can leave some room to bring down salary expectations.
Thinking about the budget you have to use is a great way to clarify your requirements. Hiring a full-stack developer with a decade of experience is a lot more costly than a graduate. Then again, a new graduate is unlikely to take your idea from a rough outline to a published success story as quickly or easily as an industry veteran.
Figuring out your time and monetary budget can help you narrow down the search to clarify your own expectations and that of your potential future candidates.
2. How to Find a Mobile App Developer?
Once you know what kind of developer you want to hire, you next have to find them. Where to go and how to successfully hunt out an available developer is one more puzzle ready to be solved.
The first resource to exhaust is your own network. Past experience, particularly with mobile app developers, is the very best teacher. Reconnecting with the teams you’ve worked with before and developers you already know and trust to deliver projects can save a great deal of time in finding and vetting new partners.
Of course, the very fact that you are reading this article at all suggests this resource is likely already exhausted, though that might not be true of your entire network. Recommendations from colleagues, industry professionals, and staff can be highly valuable when it comes to finding a team that checks all the right boxes. Leaning on these second and third-degree connections is a great short-cut to finding developers looking for a new project.
However, if these resources are not available to you, hiring platforms are an obvious choice. These boards are often the first place newly available developers look to when finding a new role to land. Here the right well-written spec will show candidates what your organization has to offer and describe what you’re looking for in them.
But if you really want to ensure that you are getting the most qualified mobile app developers, the best place to look is right here at Pangea. Our teams have already worked to identify the top 7% of software development teams worldwide. Just tell us what you need, and within 72h you’ll be connected with 5 mobile app development companies that have been vetted and selected specifically for you (all for free!)
3. How to Choose Between High-Quality App Developers
Once you’ve decided on a developer that looks like a good fit, you need a way to measure them against the requirements and expectations of your team.
The first—and best—indication that you can get of a mobile app developer’s expertise is through their prior apps. A portfolio of previously published apps is the number one way to gain insight into a candidate’s abilities and merits. These highlight a candidate’s strengths more than a heavyweight CV or detailed profile. If they’re billed as a UI guru or cross-platform specialist—expect to see examples of it here.
Testimonials, the experiences of previous clients, are an invaluable insight into how a developer works. Legitimate testimonials can provide initial clues about how well a developer is likely to work in a team.
Finally, some interview questions on the technologies they use can be a great way to gauge candidates’ level of expertise. Example problems, like the kind the team previously faced, or producing a small example program, can be a great way to determine both how they solve problems and how they communicate those solutions back to you.
If you would like to dive more into what you should look for in the interview, make sure to read our article on how to interview a mobile app developer.
4. Find out Who You Are Hiring
Everything up until now has been about finding the right developers to fit. Once you’ve solved this particular puzzle, however, you still have one of the hardest problems to solve. How do they fit into the big picture?
Obtaining reliable references from past clients, colleagues, and employers is the first step to completing the picture. Finding out how a team will fit together is just as important as finding out how their work will fit into the organization.
The most important thing you can do is to ask the team. At least one person who will work closely with newly hired developers should be sitting in on the hiring process. Ideally, being involved from the early stage of hiring right through to interview and offer.
Nobody will know better how a new hire’s soft-skills and personality will fit in better than team members themselves. Having buy-in from the team can mean more close-knit connections further down the line.
How to Hire Mobile App Developers: Finding Your Team
With the right questions in mind and a clear picture of the candidate you want to hire, how you’re going to hire them, and why—you can get to work communicating those demands and sorting out the right team for the role.
Within this article, we’ve included a mobile app developer job description template to get you started on your search. Feel free to use this, tweak it, and improve it to add some of the personality and requirements which match your organization and role. Be sure to set out, in clear terms, exactly what you expect and the kind of candidate you are encouraging to apply. Don’t forget to include the benefits of your firm and let candidates know why they should choose to invest their time and talent with you.
In a matter of hours, you may well have exactly those candidates flooding into your inbox. And if you’d rather take a more targeted approach, simply tell us what you need, and we’ll do all the leg work for you, connecting you to 5 development teams that are the perfect fit for your project in just 72h!
Mobile Apps FAQs:
Q1. How Much Does an App Developer Cost?
The average salary for mobile app developers worldwide today comes in at a little over $41,000 USD. Regional differences, however, can skew this number in a big way. In the United States, for example, salary expectations are almost three times this amount. Where your teams are based can play a significant role in costs.
The precise technologies you use and the level of experience and expertise required will also influence overall costs in a big way. The ideal app development team is typically made up of team members in senior, mid-level, and junior stages of their career.
Junior developers typically cost less than half as much as a senior or lead developer but often benefits greatly from the guidance and experience of a more senior engineer. Creating the ideal balance within a team is a question of practical experience, app complexity, and team dynamics that comes from effective project management.
Q2. How Do You Write a Job Description for an App Developer?
Begin your job description by highlighting the culture, work, and environment that makes your organization a great place for developers to invest their time and skills. Before outlining the role itself, give prospective software engineers a reason to want to apply to join a highly productive organization.
The next stage of advertising a development role should involve being clear about the precise skills and knowledge required to succeed. Begin filtering candidates by describing the technologies and tools they will need to know to join the team and create successful applications. Don't be afraid to filter out candidates anything less than perfectly suited to the role—those with the majority of requirements will still apply and you'll have a stronger pool of applicants to choose from.
Finally, describe the responsibilities of the role in broad detail and highlight the experience the right candidate should have if they're to successfully navigate the hiring process. It can help to mention here the benefits and perks of the role as well as the most difficult aspects to entice high-quality candidates.
Q3. How Do I Find a Mobile App Developer?
Networking with software engineering teams is the number one fastest and easiest way to find a mobile app developer available for your next project. The teams you're already familiar with and the recommendations they can make are a great way to get in touch with experienced app developers with knowledge and skills specific to your field.
If these resources are already exhausted, however, hiring platforms are the next best choice. Available engineers often look here first to find organizations looking for their skill set. A well-written job description can introduce your company to the right candidates and describe what your firm has to offer.
Of course, there's no easier way to find a mobile app developer than Pangea. Connecting into a rich network of mobile app developers is simply a case of telling us what you need to get in touch with vetted high-quality mobile app development firms chosen specifically for you.
