What Does a Full Stack Developer Do?
A full stack developer position is perfect for those who love working on projects from start to finish. Both front-end and back-end developmental design skills are needed in this role because full stack developers are responsible for working on both client and server interfacing tasks. They will also need skills such as graphic design, UI/UX development, and management of databases.
Those hoping to make this a career may find it useful to obtain a degree in computer science, web design or development, or a related field. Full stack developers must be proficient with fundamental front-end languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and familiar with JavaScript frameworks, such as AngularJS, React, and Amber. They should also have a working knowledge of back-end languages like Java, C#, Node, or PHP. This is a highly in-demand position that puts a developer in a key role within the workings of a project.
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National Average Salary
Full stack developer salaries vary by experience, industry, organization size, and geography. To explore salary ranges by local market, please visit our sister site zengig.com.
The average U.S. salary for a Full Stack Developer is:
$120,250
Full Stack Developer Job Descriptions
Crafting the perfect job description may be the key to finding an exceptional full stack developer. To help you with your recruiting search, our team has put together some examples from past openings.
Example 1
We’ve continued to be the best at providing software solutions for one simple reason – we hire the best! Right now, we’re looking for a full stack developer to join our cross-platform team to make that happen. You’ll be expected to be comfortable with both front-end and back-end languages and have an eye for visual design and functionality. This position will be handling the entire software development cycle and will produce scalable software solutions in a team environment using the Agile methodology. If you think you have what it takes, we’d love to hear from you!
Typical duties and responsibilities
- Ideate, develop, and implement software solutions
- Design client and server-side architecture
- Create and maintain databases and applications
- Create appealing front-end applications
- Design and test effective and efficient functionality
- Create and update technical documentation
- Troubleshoot, debug, and update software
Education and experience
- Degree in computer science, statistics, or another related field
- 2+ years proven experience as a full stack developer or related role
Required skills and qualifications
- Excellent teamwork skills
- Exceptional attention to detail
- Master of time management and organization
- Working knowledge of numerous languages and frameworks
- Working knowledge of databases, web servers, and UX/UI design
- A keen analytical mind with a creative flair
Preferred qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or computer engineering
- 3-5 years experience in a full stack developer position
- Extensive experience with web application frameworks
- High proficiency in C#, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, SASS, PowerShell, and T-SQL
- Experience working in a team environment
- Experience with Microsoft 365 products
- Experience with Azure cloud computing
Example 2
Responsibilities
- Participate in the planning, designing, and development of HumanBase, a data-driven, web-based application for biologists and biomedical researchers worldwide
- Create interactive visualizations for exploring genomic data and biological predictions using D3 and React
- Design and develop Python REST API services for integrating, querying and visualizing large-scale genomic data
- Learn about cutting-edge machine-learning approaches to analyze heterogeneous biological data
- Contribute to defining software best practices, coding standards, and standardization of tools
- Work collaboratively in a vibrant environment with colleagues from diverse technical fields
- Perform any other duties or tasks as assigned or required
Qualifications
- You are passionate about software engineering and have a strong interest in science
- You enjoy working in a small team and collaborating with others from diverse technical backgrounds
- You have experience developing full-stack web-based applications with Django and React
- You have at least four years experience as a software engineer participating in the planning, designing, and development of web-based products
- You have extensive experience with the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) and associated tools (version control, deployment, etc.)
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science
Example 3
Duties
- Design, prototype, and develop new features based on requirements
- Design and implement APIs, backend microservices
- Takes care of security & privacy configuration options with the goal of meeting various compliance guidelines
- Ability to think like a user and provide rapid issue resolution for production environment
- Comfortable with iterative development and unit testing
- Conduct peer reviews, provide feedback, and prioritize changes that bring stability
- Develop tools, templates, runbooks, and provide operational support for running applications in cloud environments
- Perform other duties as assigned
Requirements
- Minimum Education/Experience: Bachelor’s degree (BA or BS) in computer science or related field from an accredited college or university plus a minimum of six (6) years of experience in the specific or related field. Or High School Diploma or equivalent plus a minimum of eight (8) years of experience in the field
- Knowledge of credit unions or financial services industry is helpful
- PCI and HIPAA compliance knowledge is helpful
Technical skills
- 6+ years of professional development experience
- 3+ years of experience in full-stack development
- 3+ years recent experience focusing on building customer facing web portals and utilizing Microsoft Azure or AWS cloud resources
- Secure coding practices – OWASP guidelines
- Integrate applications using SSO, 3rd party connectors, iframe or JS SDK
- HTML5/CSS3
- JavaScript, ES6
- JS frameworks (Webix, JSX, React/Redux, Vue/Vuex, etc.)
- Node + npm
Preferred experience
- AWS
- Data Analysis
- Kubernetes
- ORMs (SqlAlchemy, nHibernate)
Example 4
This full stack developer role will be frontend focused, responsible for crafting web products, working in modern stacks, taking designs, and translating them into responsive HTML/CSS. This person has a problem-solving foundation and approaches all challenges with a positive drive.
Responsibilities
- Timely development, testing, and release of frontend experiences
- Work with headless content management systems to model data
- Build out encapsulated reusable components
- Work with a variety of web products and applications in a full software development lifecycle
- Perform coding, testing, documentation, and implementation of websites including cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, and search engine optimization
- Keen attention to detail, aligning with HZ’s high standard of quality
- Work with other developers, designers, and product managers to develop new features consistent with product roadmap
- Learn and absorb new technologies quickly, be a strong team player and rapidly adapt to changing business and customer demands
- Be innovative, contributing ideas and working with constituents to evaluate and propose approaches that balance speed to market with code quality
- Maintain awareness in technology developments that affect either a user’s ability to use our products or extend new product potential
- Able to react to change productively and handle other essential tasks as assigned
Qualifications
- Ability to complete and discuss a full stack coding exercise
- Experience with backend (server-side) programming and syntax – specifically in data querying and API services
- Strong, modern frontend development experience – one or more development framework/libraries required (AngularJS, ReactJS, VueJS)
- CSS styling and HTML markup experience, preferably experience working with UI/UX designers or self-sufficiently designing pages
- Strong logical thinking and problem solving skills
- Experience working with development utilities (yarn, git, VSCode/Studio)
Candidate Certifications to Look For
- Udemy Full Stack Developer Certificate. This beginner-friendly course provides a step-by-step approach to developing a good foundation for current web development. Utilizing HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, Unix, NPM, REST, authentications, PassportJS, Authorization, and much more, candidates can dive into the world of full stack development with these instructor-led courses.
- Coursera Web Development. Beginner-level courses specializing in web development and coding, offered by the University of Michigan. This 5-course structure will teach YouTube basic design principles and create interactive web experiences with several exercises, quizzes, and assignments. This finally culminates in the student designing their very own portfolio as their final project.
- Udacity “Nanodegree” Certification. This certification focuses less on the development of foundational strengths and more on job-relevant specifics that industry leaders tend to look for in their candidates. With this in mind, it’s recommended that candidates have prior experience with object-oriented programming languages. Upon completion of this certification, they’ll demonstrate that they can design and build databases, create and deploy APIs, and handle application backend work.
Sample Interview Questions
- What languages are you comfortable working with?
- What’s your favorite programming language and why?
- What would you consider to be the most important tool for a developer?
- Are you working on any development projects now?
- What’s your method of staying up to date on new tech trends?
- Would you consider yourself an excellent communicator?
- What language and tools would you use to create a project?
- How did you decide what tools to work with on previous projects?
- How would you handle inefficient coding from your teammates?
- What was the best implementation experience you’ve had?
- What is the hardest part of being considered full stack in your opinion?
- What’s CORS?
- What’s continuous integration?
- What is an inversion of control?
- How would you reduce the load times of a web application?
- How much time did it take to complete [this work sample]?
- How would you test your code’s functionality?