Career Paths for Software Engineers
There tends to be this perception that there isn't much to software engineering other than programming. The belief being, that a person who can code is immediately a software engineer and anyone who can't isn't technical.
In this tutorial, we are going to challenge this perception and give an in-depth overview of varying career paths that one's coding skills can take them. We will divide the career paths into categories: coding and non-coding tracks. While the coding path will include the careers that require extensive programming and coding skills, the non-coding path will address positions in technology that can be pursued with zero or minimal programming skills.
However, before going into these career paths individually, let's clear a misconception that is found among many in the software engineering industry.
Engineers vs. Developers
Often we see that the terms: software engineer, software developer, and programmer are used synonymously. While there shouldn't be a distinction, in reality, there's a very slight connotation between these terms for job postings and for positions at companies. This is just an observed trend-- in theory they should be exactly the same.
Some may argue that one's educational path is the only distinguishing factor between these terms, but really it is more about the skill-set as a whole. Therefore, it’s not true that a self taught programmer or bootcamp grad is a developer, and that a CS degree holder is an engineer.
Typically speaking, "engineer" positions expect not only familiarity with programming and development, but also with fundamental computer science concepts and thinking at the architecture level. The desired candidates would have studied the engineering processes: from requirement gathering to prototype designing, and from the actual development to the maintenance, "software engineer" roles need awareness of all the processes that are involved in the development of a product.
On the other hand, "developer" job requisitions will typically focus more on hands-on coding. There's not as much of an expectation for in-depth understanding of architecture level details.
Again, we're not talking about individuals with either title-- we're talking about the expectations set by folks who use these titles for job postings. Knowing these expectations and connotations helps to deeply evaluate opportunities and see how companies perceive their development teams.
Coding Tracks:
Frontend developer:
They are proficient in working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They are responsible for developing the user interface, the view of the application with which the end-user interacts upon. It is a plus for a front-end developer to have strong design skills to facilitate the user experience. Some popular front-end technologies are; Vue.js, Npm (node package manager), Ionic, React, Bootstrap, Angular, and Flutter.
Backend developer:
They are proficient in core (usually statically typed) programming languages and have an in-depth understanding of client-server communication. Usually, backend development includes:
- API design and development
- database management
- management of client-server interaction and server management
- administration of infrastructure and environments.
It is a general perception that a backend developer should have some frontend knowledge as well, since it allows you to visualize how backend data will be rendered to the user. Some popular programming languages for backend development are Ruby, Java, C++, Python, and PHP. Following are some of the popular backend frameworks: Django, Laravel, Rails, and ASP.NET.
Full-Stack developer:
When a person works on both the frontend and backend of an application, they are typically called full-stack developers. A full-stack developer is responsible for coding the front-end of the application using HTML, CSS, JS, Angular, Vue, or other front-end development technologies. They are also responsible for the programming and management of servers using languages and frameworks like PHP, ASP.Net, and Node. Moreover, is it also their responsibility to administer the database using SQL, SQLite, or MongoDB.
DevOps Engineer:
They are technical gurus who are there to bridge the gap between the developers and the IT staff. DevOps are often core assets of any agile development environment, responsible for automating a team's code releases and deployments.
The track to becoming a DevOps engineer often goes through the full stack developer track. A full-stack engineer has better chances of becoming a DevOps engineer because of the experience and understanding one gets from seeing the full architecture and its reliance on infrastructure. Some of the popular DevOps tools are Git and Github, Jenkins, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Software Architect:
A software architect is responsible for the high-level design of the product or application. They are responsible for setting:
- technical standards
- the choices of tools and platforms
- the bar for code quality.
A software architect is a more "prestigious" title and generally considered a higher-skilled job than a full stack developer or a DevOps engineer. It requires extensive experience in the engineering field since they need to see the big picture.
In short, they are responsible for designing the architecture of the software on which the whole system is going to be built. Therefore, designing the architecture requires extensive experience. Surprisingly, much of the work is no longer in the actual coding implementation. Rather, it is usually in the creation of design documents and diagrams.
There are certain visualization tools that are used for designing the software architecture such as Google Docs, Draw.io, Visual Paradigm, and Lucidchart. However, these tools are just to visualize what a software architecture proposes. Therefore, there isn’t any tool that can be learned to become an architect. It comes with experience and research.
QA Engineer (automation):
Maintaining high software quality standards is a very delicate job. Therefore, it is always good practice to have a dedicated resource for maintaining the reliability and correctness of the software. Someone needs to work on ensuring that enhancements don't break existing functionalities and that the existing system works flawlessly.
This is where the Software Quality Assurance Engineers come. They are responsible for testing the software application from the end user's perspective to make sure that everything is working as intended. Software testing can be done manually as well as automatically.
An QA with good coding skills can become an automation engineer who is responsible for automating the software testing. A manual tester would spend days in regression of a large application. However, an automation engineer could get it done in one click. The following are some of the more popular tools for front-end automation: Cypress, selenium, and UFT. POSTMAN, Rspec (for Ruby-based apps), and Selenium.
Data Scientist:
A data scientist is responsible for finding the hidden patterns out of the huge streams of available data. As the media loves to say, data is the new oil in the 21st century. Data scientists are technical people who specialize in refining this oil to understand hidden information.
Becoming a data scientist requires a good grip on mathematics and statistical concepts as well as any core programming language, preferably Python. Following are some of the programming languages that a data scientist should master: python, R, SQL, and Javascript.
Data Engineer:
They are responsible for extracting and managing the data that would be used by the data scientist. Their job usually involves the ETL process: Extract, Transform, and load. They maintain the data warehouses and focus on maintaining the infrastructure and architecture for data generation. A data engineer must have a good grip on ETL tools, SQL, and programming with Python/R.
Ethical Hacker:
Why wait for a third-party who may not be our well-wisher to exploit the weaknesses of our system? Ethical hackers are responsible for intentionally penetrating the system to explore the system’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Ethical hackers are a part of a software development team in Reputable software houses. This usually involves pen (penetration) testing, network security. An ethical hacker should have a good grip on programming languages especially, JS. Following are tools that are used for ethical hacking: Nmap, Kismet, Nessus, and NetStumbler.
Database Engineer:
They are responsible for designing, managing, and monitoring complex databases. A database engineer is expected to have an excellent grip on database technologies, programming languages, hardware, and security aspects of the database. They work on the security, scalability, and stability of the databases.
Non-coding Tracks:
Project Manager:
Like management of other kinds, becoming a project manager is more about managing humans (and in this case, managing projects through humans) rather than being a technical guru. But an engineer having excellent management skills has better chances of becoming a project manager and leading a project than a person with extensive management skills but no technical background. Therefore, an ideal candidate for a project manager is someone with a deep understanding of the implementation of a project, as well as good organizational skills and relationships with the team.
QA Engineer (manual):
QA engineers who do not code and manually test the application are responsible for maintaining the test cases-- and running smoke, sanity, and regression testing-- on the application before releases. They must manually manage the whole testing process. QA folks usually use a spreadsheet software like Google sheets to maintain the test cases, and utilize word docs to document the bugs. A manual QA engineer should have good managing skills and attention to detail. They should design and ensure proper testing standards to avoid unnecessary QA cycles.
Product Owner:
In an agile development team, a product owner (often synonymous with Scrum Master below) is responsible for creating, maintaining, and maturing user stories that would be used by the engineers for development purposes. They are responsible for communicating the product’s goals and setting the priorities for the development of functionalities or bug-fixes. A product owner can come from many of the different backgrounds that we've covered, including that of Software Quality assurance.
Scrum Master:
Scrum is one of the most popular agile development methodologies. A scrum master is responsible to make it easier for the whole team to understand the scrum methodology and the practices. They are responsible for creating a sense of self-organizing, self-management, and effective agile practices among the team members.
UI/UX Designer:
Remember the responsibilities of a front-end developer, who was supposed to have good designing skills to ensure a user-friendly view of the product? Actually, it is the UIUX designer who is responsible for designing the front-end design of the product, not using programming languages, but using some tools like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Axure, and Marvel. They are not our regular graphic designers who have a good grip on the tools and can design what they are told to. At the initial stages, they design mock-ups, high-level functionalities and then move towards in-depth working and flow of the application.
SEO/SEM:
Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing both are means of attracting more and more traffic to your website. Actually, SEO is a part of SEM. Search Engines provide a list of standards to maintain and if maintained, they rank your website higher. There are other ways as well to increase the traffic on your websites such as Ads or other in-organic means. To be good at SEM, you should have a good understanding of basic web design, HTML, and CSS. Moreover, you would be required to have a good grip on any of the tools that are available for the analysis of web traffic.
Web Analysts:
They are responsible for tracking the traffic on the website. Actually, it falls under the SEM category but web analytics is a full-time job in itself. Tools like Google Analytics, Spring Metrics, and Whoopra are used to give you a much deeper insight into the trends and patterns of the traffic on your website.
Data Analyst:
If we talk about the career of a data analyst specifically from a Data Science perspective, a data analyst is a coding job. However, certain organizations do not require such a level of analysis. A good grip on SQL would simply do the trick and tools like PowerBi, and Tableau would be used for the data analysis. Often under-estimated, Excel is one of the strongest tools for tool-based analysis of the data.
Business Analyst:
They usually have a computer science background with a specialization in business administration. They are responsible for the analysis of the business, generating reports, and identifying the patterns from the available data. they do not require hardcore programming skills. Most of the business analyst work requires a good grip on tools like Tableau and PowerBI. In addition to that, a grip on SQL to play with the data is a plus for a business analyst.
One Pager Cheat Sheet
- In this tutorial, we
challenge the perceptionthatsoftware engineeringis just programming and provide an overview of various coding and non-coding career paths for software engineers. - Although there should not be a distinction between software engineers, developers, and programmers, there is a slight difference in connotation for job postings and positions at companies, as software engineers tend to be expected to have more knowledge of fundamental computer science concepts and architecture level details than software developers who are generally more familiar with the hands-on coding.
- There are a variety of software engineer tracks to become, such as a
Full-Stack Developer,DevOps Engineer,Software Architect,QA engineer (automation),Data Scientist,Data Engineer,Ethical Hacker, andDatabase Engineer, all of which require different sets of skills, experience, and tools. - An ideal candidate for a non-coding career in the software industry should have a deep understanding of their role, as well as good organizational skills and relationships with the team.