Full stack development is one of the popular trends in the modern software industry worldwide, especially in small businesses and startups. In all major software development markets, the number of startups and small businesses has grown. Consequently, significant demand for full stack engineers has emerged.
Full stack developer is the fourth fastest-growing job with an annual growth of over 35% preceded by data scientists, robotics engineers, and AI specialists, according to the Emerging Jobs Report 2020 published by LinkedIn.
Role of a Full-Stack Developer in Small Business and Startups
A full-stack developer has to have knowledge of all layers of development such as the presentation layer, the logic layer, and the data layer. A full-stack developer is also referred to as “jack of all trades.” One single software developer can perform almost any of the development activities required for developing a complete website or web application from scratch.
New web technologies, automated tools, and functional libraries have made web development easier but also increased the number of roles. This has both made it possible and necessary to have engineers who can straddle all these roles. Small businesses and startups in particular can’t hire a plethora of specialized developers and therefore rely on full-stack developers. A secondary benefit of full-stack engineers is their broad perspective on web development. Apart from knowing what they are doing, they know why they are doing it.
What Does a Full-Stack Developer Do?
A full-stack engineer is supposed to develop a web application independently using a conformable stack of technologies at different layers of software development. The most common stacks of technologies used by full-stack developers are normally based on JavaScript such as AngularJS, Node.JS, MongoDB, Express JS, and others.
The main activities performed by full-stack developers are listed below.
- Customer requirement assessment and coordination
- UX/UI design
- Developing user-facing web components
- Designing and developing RESTful APIs
- Developing back end logical modules
- Integration of back end and front end components
- Developing data schema and other database components
- Database integration
- Implementing security and privacy mechanisms
- Developing servers and server scripting
- Ensuring the responsiveness of the website
- Ensuring correct implementation of security features
- Ensuring search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities work effectively
- Staying abreast of new trends, technologies, and standards
- Deploying websites and web applications
- Continuous testing and development
- Performance testing
What Is a Full-Stack Engineer Salary in Different Countries?
The salary of a full-stack developer varies from country to country due to numerous factors. The most important of those include the state and nature of the economy, living costs, demand and supply in the market and labor laws. The average salary of a full-stack developer in a few top countries is shown in the following chart:
The USA and Switzerland are among the countries where a full-stack developer earns the most. In the UK, France, and other Western European countries, the salaries are also in the middle bracket. Ukraine is the least expensive place to hire a full-stack engineer.
Top Benefits of Hiring Full-Stack Developer for Small Businesses and Startups
The top benefits of having a full-stack developer are listed below.
- Reduced development cost due to cross-domain responsibilities discharged by a full-stack developer
- Better responsibility tracing and project ownership
- Increased productivity with limited resources
- Access to the industry experience and a wide range of technical expertise
- Faster return on investment ROI
Final Takeaway
Full-stack developers offer numerous benefits to small businesses and startups such as reduced cost, faster development, efficient problem solving, access to a large number of technologies and trends, and many others. All those benefits increase the demand for full-stack developers in small businesses and startups. Almost all types of startups prefer having the services of a full-stack developer in their technical team of web development.