How to Become a Senior Backend Developer and Beyond?
Hello everyone!!! In this article let us see what are skills required to be Senior Backend Engineer and beyond
Most of us would be coding in Java8 these days and be familiar with Streams, Lambda, and so on. Even many of us would be very good programmers who can do data structures very well and can solve complex problems easily. But these skills are not just enough to survive in the IT field. As we all know, technologies and tools are growing rapidly and there are hundreds of thousands of things getting launched every day. The backend stack is very big and just forget the Fullstack technologies.
I have listed down important things to be learned in addition to the code programming as the job demands so
1. Microservices
It is very hard to see a modern application without a Microservices framework. There are a lot of microservices frameworks for every technology and knowing one of them is vital. If you are a Java developer, then the widely used ones are
- Spring Boot
- Micronaut
- Quarkus
2. Cloud
Most of the applications are in the cloud and in transit to the cloud. I would say that not learning Cloud technology in 2022 is a crime. The most famous ones are
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
It is a must to learn one of the above and get certified as a Developer / Solutions Architect
3. Containers and Orchestrators
Containers and Orchestration are synonymous with Microservices and Cloud-native applications. Most of the microservices are containerized and deployed as containers into the cloud. The things to learn are
- Docker
- Any one of Container Orchestrators like Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, AWS ECS, etc
Moreover, it is good to know how an image repository like DockerHub works
4. Reactive Programming
Reactive Programming is getting famous as it gives a good performance for the system by saving resources (Threads). It is based on a Non-blocking Event-Loop mechanism and is hence widely sought after now. These are the frameworks that use the Event Loop mechanism
- Spring Webflux — For Java
- NodeJS
It is also good to know about reactive database drivers. In contrast to the blocking nature of JDBC, R2DBC allows you to work with SQL databases using a reactive API.
5. Messaging and Streaming
Messaging is the heart of any modern microservices and through the messaging, information flows from one service to another asynchronously. There are 2 ways for microservices to connect with each other
- Synchronous communication using API Calls
- Asynchronous communication Topics and Queues
A microservice can produce the data and publish it to a topic and there will be other services that subscribe to this topic and they are called consumers. Famous messaging technologies are
- Apache Kafka
- RabbitMQ
- IBM MQ
and so on
Streaming is the process of processing large volumes of real-time data and building data pipelines, storing it in data sinks, and analyzing the data. Kafka is one of the famous streaming tools
6. gRpc and GraphQL
REST APIs are the most common protocol for a web applications these days. But there are other alternatives to be considered based on the circumstances.
GraphQL also called Graph Query Language, is a protocol by which we specify only the necessary data from the API. This will make the response lighter and more efficient. The client has more freedom with data fetched and hence development time will be faster
gRPC protocol works on top of HTTP/2 and protobuf and it is 7 times after than REST for receiving data and 10 times faster than REST when sending data
It is extremely important to learn these and try out
7. OAuth2 and OpenIDConnect
OAuth2 and OIDC are important frameworks when it comes to Authentication and Authorization. OAuth2 takes care of Authorization and OIDC takes care of Authentication. There are many different flows in OAuth2 but the important ones are
- Authorization code flow (Used for login pages to grant access from users to log in by Google, Facebook, Github, etc)
- Client Credentials Flow (Used for the machine-to-machine communication i.e backend servers using a Client ID and Secret)
8. Other Programming Languages
It is always good to learn an extra language to reap the benefits and use them when the situation demands it. With the microservices framework, it is not a necessity for every service to be developed in the same language. Some services can be in Java and others can be in Python or Golang. Learning one of these will be very helpful.
9. jUnit, Mockito and SonarQube
It is a must to learn Junit5, and Mockito and understand how coverage works. It is also good to learn the Java Code Coverage tool (JACOCO) and how Sonarqube traces the code to find vulnerabilities, hotspots, and code smells. By looking at it, we can improve our coding practices and will help to become a clean coder.
10. Intellij IDE and Plugins
Intellij IDE is by far the best IDE for microservices development. With many plugins around like JPABuddy, SonarLint, Rainbow brackets, and a lot more, it will save time for every developer. So, if you are not using it, it is the right time to move to it.
11. Caching and No-SQL DB
It is very important for a Senior Developer to understand the different types of caches like In-Memory and Distributed caching. The use cases must be understood and the cache should be selected accordingly. Redis is the most widely used cache and it is offered by cloud providers like AWS
Most of the developers would have worked only with relational databases. No-SQL DBs like MongoDB and Cassandra are widely used these days thanks to big data technologies. The relational databases are vertically scaled whereas No-SQL DBs are horizontally scaled and fit perfectly for cloud environments to scale up and down based on the demands
12. OpenAPI and Swagger
Every developer must know the OpenAPI specs and Swagger. It is a good practice to use swagger in all the microservices applications so that the API documentation is automatically exported to an endpoint and can be viewed by anyone
13. Logging and Monitoring
The most crucial part of any application is Logging and Monitoring. Logging and Monitoring help us to understand the errors and metrics by Visualizing them. The common tools for logging and monitoring are
- ELK stack (ElasticSearch, Log Stash, and Kibana)
- Prometheus and Grafana
- Dynatrace
It is useful to know about configuring logback/log4j2 and then learn about ELK and how it can be integrated from a basic Spring Boot Application
14. CICD Pipelines
Even though CICD pipelines come under Devops expertise, it is very important for developers to understand how it works and debug the script if the pipeline fails. A senior developer must know the pipeline script and should know what are the stages for the pipeline like build, test, package, deploy, etc. There are many pipeline tools like
- Bitbucket
- Travis CI
- AWS Code Pipeline
- Jenkins
- Gitlab
15. Linux, DNS, Networking
Most of the systems are running in Linux and hence it is important to know the basics of Linux like navigation, curl, and so on
DNS and Networking are other areas to be learned. It is important for a Senior Developer to understand how the website is registered and how the DNS mapping is done for the domain name and how the routing is done to the server.
It is very good to start with AWS Route 53 and see how the domain is mapped in Route53 and then how the request is routed to the load balancer and to the servers.
16. Agile and Scrum methodologies
While working in an Agile team, it is very important to know all the methodologies and ceremonies as it is widely adopted by various organizations. A lot of certifications available like CSM, PSM, etc, and learning it the proper way makes it very easier to join any team and start moving quickly
17. Understanding Overall Architecture
It is always good to see how all these moving components work together as a single system. There are a lot of complex systems out there scaling up exponentially on demand and serving millions of customers. Netflix is a pioneer when it comes to microservices and the cloud. It is good to explore their architectures and how they use the components effectively. Uber is also another example. This will help you to expand your horizons in terms of System Design/architecture
Hope you have enjoyed reading this article. Thanks for reading and stay tuned.
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