The app market remains promising with 6+ billion smartphone users. We’ll tell you how to find a great dedicated developer, listing their skills and competences.

The Talent Hunt Begins

Before you hire dedicated mobile developers, you need to decide first:

• What kind of product it will be — a web app, single or multiplayer game, banking application, a photo beautifier, and so on.
• Who is the target audience — this defines the list of features, visual design, pricing, as well as other extra “bells and whistles”.
• How many users do you expect to download it — that means that server support and patch releases should be more or less stable.
• How fast you need the project to be finished — the faster, the more devs and money you will need.

And if you’ve planned the mobile app development cycle already, then check our must-have mobile developer’s skillset.

Meat & Potatoes

Let’s see which essential skills an expert developer must have these days. We’ll cover both mobile and web development intricacies.

Mobile development

Here, the skillset depends on the platform — whether you make Android or iOS apps. Although sometimes, required skills for these systems may overlap.

For Android:

1. Basics

A dedicated mobile app developer starts with his or her PL. For an Android application developer, knowledge of Java and Kotlin is critical.

Your candidate should understand every single aspect — from syntax and concurrency to multithreading, And how they can be applied in the context of your product.

2. GUI

GUI is the face of your product. Your developer team must have devs with XML, YAML, AXON or OGDL experience. These tools serve the same goal —  sculpting a clear and intuitive layout. XML goes wonderfully with Java or Kotlin.

And to make it look appealing and sleek, such tools as ContsraintLayot, RecyclerView and also Sketch, Zeplin, Android Jetpack or Iconjar will be a great addition to the development work.

With them, you can design icons, buttons, screen transitions, animations, and also take care of navigation.

3. Android Studio (AS)

With this power-tool, you can marry business logic with an awesome GUI. As well as automate workflow, create code templates, apply C++ and integrate cloud storage.

If you need to hire dedicated app developers for producing an Android app — knowledge of AS is absolutely vital. It will help you put out a quality project faster. And reduce the potential losses, delays and other issues.

4. Security

Android has a bunch of default security components.

However, the candidate must be aware of how to make the app even safer. Especially if you store sensitive data: credit card details, personal info, etc.

The jobseeker should explain how they will do it. And with which tools: user permissions, encryption, authorization tokens, and so on.

5. Testing

QA is a whole different department, But while designing web and mobile applications, it won’t hurt to do some pre-testing. Check the resume for such tools as UI Automator, Mockito, Robolectric, Junit, and so on.

For iOS:

1. Swift

Swift to iOS is what Java to Android. Your candidate must be experienced with Swift and know how to handle objects, switch statements, apply syntax, and so on.

Apple updates Swift on a regular basis — Swift 5 is the current version. But each successive version is compatible with the previous one. Besides, there’s binary compatibility for applications, which makes designing apps for newer iOS instances easy.

2. GUI

From spatial logic to pretty appearance and intuitive navigation — there’s a caboodle of tools to provide it all.

Among them are Xcode — the primary workhorse with its table view, page view, navigation, GLKit view, and other controllers.

If you spot on the resume Figma, Mockplus, Marvel, Adobe XD or other similar tools — it’s also a good sign.

Apple Human Interface Guidelines are also important — they are a set of rules and tips to design an app that people will actually want to use.

3. GCD

GCD or Grand Central Dispatch provides application concurrency.

That is, you can enable your app to execute multiple tasks at the same time. Like applying various effects and filters simultaneously, while downloading new AR content and automatically saving the project in a video editor.

4. JSON

JavaScript Object Notation is a data-representation format. JSON comprises strings of data that are easy to read for both humans and machines.

It’s so helpful, it may soon replace XML as a data-representation gold standard for data exchange. Its understanding is among the key factors that make a good iOS dev.

5. Memory management

Every IOS gadget has a memory limit set for apps. if an app exceeds it, it will shut down.

These per-process constraints must be observed. Otherwise, your app will score some low ratings.

An example: for iPad Pro 9.7 the allowed app limits are: 1395MB/1971MB/71% (iOS 10.0.2). They differ from one gadget to another, so testing is necessary.

Web development

Development services for web require a different set of skills. Let’s review them.

1. HTML

HTML or CSS are nuts and bolts of web development. HTML is a markup language for constructing the core anatomy of a webpage.

CSS is a “beauty” tool. Fonts, layouts, color palette — everything that contributes to a smooth and pleasant user experience is made with it.

2. JavaScript (JS)

JS is a tool to make your website complete, contemporary and clickable — let’s call it a triple-C principle.

Complete. That means that every element you possibly need — from a search bar or interactive map to integrated videos, audios and animations — is here.

Contemporary. As we’re in Web 2.5 era, users expect smooth performance from your webpage, as well as features that your rivals can offer.

Clickable. These features coupled with a clean, catchy and intuitive design will make users stay longer on the page. Bringing more mouse clicks.

3. LAMP

For a web product, you may also want to hire a dedicated LAMP web developer. It stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

A LAMP stack developer is a valuable employee. By using their LAMP knowledge, they can integrate such perks as modular protocol handing, relational tables, open-source tools, virus protection, encryption, etc.

4. Testing

Testing the end result and removing bugs is critical too.

Check if the candidate’s resume says anything about QA skills and knowledge of such tools as Fiddler, Open Dragonfly, DeBugBar, YSlow or Developer Tools for various browsers.

5. Server management

Server is the backbone of your web product. Even if your candidate had some experience with a Minecraft development and knows how to manipulate and support a Minecraft server — this is already a good sign.

Experience with such tools as Atera, N-able RMM, NinjaOne, ManageEngine Applications Manager and others is definitely a plus.

Hiring Dedicated Developers — No sweat! 

Use our little guide when going through resumes and CVs.

Don’t forget: while it’s great for one employee to be experienced with numerous tools, it’s more preferable that they highly specialize in one or two and dabble in the rest. (So their intellectual horizons stay broad).

And we’ll help you find the best specialists. Hire MC developers for free, QA engineers or OS programmers with us — we have the best talents!