How To Hire a Java Developer? A Comprehensive Guide for Employers and HR Managers

5 min readSep 29, 2021

Java Developers have been some of the most in-demand employees in the market for years. If you are planning to hire a person for this position, this article may be helpful. Here you will find all the most essential information about responsibilities, salaries, expectations and ways to find a qualified Java professional. Let’s get started!

Who is a Java Developer?

As the name suggests, Java Developer is a person who specializes in programming in Java — the second of the most popular and widely used programming languages in the world.

Even though it is a very mature language (it was created in 1995), it is still actively developed, updated (a few days ago, the latest version was released: Java SE 17) and supported by the most prominent technology giants.

Java has been at the top languages hiring managers to look for in a candidate, as confirmed by the results of the HackerRank Developers Skills Report 2020:

What is the secret to Java’s popularity despite the years? First of all, Java originated as an open-source project available to everyone. What’s more, it is very flexible, and you can use it to make a wide variety of applications and software systems. Moreover, it can be run on many devices. Typically, it is used for backend services, but it also works great for mobile application development because all Android apps are written in Java. It is used by giant corporations, as well as individual users who create applications purely as a hobby.

Java — popular use cases

Due to the great versatility of this language, Java will work well for creating almost any application or program. It can be used for developing:

banking systems
insurance apps
stock exchange systems
mobile applications
social media platforms

Java’s popularity is also proven by the fact that well-known services such as Netflix, Amazon, YouTube or Linkedin were created using this technology.

Depending on the company’s needs, Java Developer programs selected software using the Java language and related frameworks and libraries. Some of the “must-have” Java technology stacks include:

Hibernate — to implement the database access layer
Spring — to application development
Maven / Gradle — to build and manage dependencies on other Java libraries
Lombok — to faster writing
JUnit — to prepare unit tests of applications

Java Developer — responsibilities

The responsibilities of a Java Developer also depend on the requirements and needs of the company they work for. The most popular tasks for this position usually include:

Programming, implementing and maintaining Java software
Writing clean and efficient code
Contributing to the development lifecycle
Taking care of high availability and performance of created solutions
Writing clean and efficient code
Working with product owners, technical leads and Agile team
Meetings with the software development team and clients
Taking part in software analysis, testing, and debugging
Ensuring designs comply with specifications
Preparing releases of software components
Creating system documentation

Java Developer — salary

Due to the high demand for these professionals, Java Developers are some of the highest-earning programmers in the world. Their salaries depend on their years of experience and the country in which they are employed. Below we have prepared a comparison of earnings in a few selected countries based on data from Glassdoor:

3 ways to hire Java Developer in your company

Finding a qualified Java Developer can be more complicated than you think. It’s usually not enough to add a job listing to the “Careers” page on a company’s website and wait for applications. So, what can you do to have a Java Developer in your team? Here are five tips that can help:

1. Write a job offer tailored to your candidate’s needs

A good job ad is your business card and often the first contact with a candidate. Therefore, you should write it in a way that will interest him and encourage him to work in your team. How to do it? First of all, respect your candidate’s time. Software developers don’t want to waste their time and expect to find all specific information in the ad. You should include information about salary, tech stack, possible forms of cooperation, equipment, used tools, project, team, and everything important from the candidate’s perspective. You can ask programmers from your team what information is crucial for them or publish an ad on the job board for the IT industry that has tailored ads for the candidate.

2. Search for developers in the right places

Contrary to what you may think, LinkedIn may not be the best place to find an IT professional. If you are concerned about finding a qualified developer, you need to find other sources as well. These can be Java-related topic forums, but also GitHub or StackOverflow. In these services, you will find profiles of software developers, which can give you more information than their LinkedIn or even CV. How is this possible? For example, on GitHub, developers like to share their projects, so you will assess the quality of their work and whether they are involved in the Java community.

3. Consider IT outsourcing

Want to find a Java Developer as soon as possible? The solution may be to use the services of an outsourcing company. Remember, outsourcing is not just project outsourcing which involves outsourcing the entire project to an external team. You can choose another form, such as staff augmentation which involves hiring one or more consultants for your internal team. For more info about this outsourcing model, read our article: What is Staff Augmentation?

When deciding on outsourcing, you should consider the earnings of Java developers in different countries. Choosing Eastern European countries, such as Poland, you can hire qualified specialists to your team even three times cheaper than, for example, in the UK, Norway or Switzerland.

Are you looking for Java Developers to join your team? Contact us. In our talent pool we have many qualified specialists willing to join your team.

Originally published at https://nexttechnology.io on September 29, 2021.