How to Write a Web Developer Job Description

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the job market for web developers and digital designers is projected to grow 23% from 2021 to 2031. To attract a talented web developer to support your organization, as workers in this area could retire or transfer to different jobs or careers, creating an effective job description is essential to ensure continuous coverage.

Let’s explore this occupation and how you can write the perfect job description to meet and hire top talent in this field.

What Is a Web Developer?

The first and best thing to do when writing a job description for a web developer is gain a deeper understanding of the role and how it will benefit your web teams. Essentially, a web developer is a professional who creates and maintains the technical components of your organization’s website.

This person is responsible for the construction and design of websites and ensures that each website meets the various stakeholders’ expectations. The basic responsibilities for this role typically include that the site runs smoothly, looks good, and provides easy access and navigation without loading issues, lagging, or error messages during navigation.

More specifically, web developers ensure continuously and optimally reliable website performance and capacity. These are the standard measures of your website’s speed and indicate how much traffic your site can handle to avoid slowdowns and outages.

Web developers also study various programming languages and write unique code that powers websites. Then, they work with designers to make sure their code can be adopted and implemented on a site so that it looks and behaves as intended in the coding.

While it isn’t their core task, certain web developers—front-end developers—sometimes do create content for a website. With that note, let’s look at the different types of web developers.

Front-End Developer

The role of a front-end developer is pretty much what it sounds like. This professional is responsible for the front-end or client-facing aspect of a website, which entails everything someone sees and interacts with on a website. The components of this include the following:

• Menus
• Buttons
• Images
• Any other interactive and navigational components

Additional front-end web developer responsibilities include:

• Familiarity with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which is a type of code important for styling elements in a web page’s design.
• Ability to create HTML markup, which is a type of code needed to create and display web content.

Back-End Developer

Back-end web developers focus on the mechanical aspects of building and maintaining a website. They understand the internal workings that process data and perform vital functions. While front-end developers control everything end-users see on a website, back-end professionals focus on considerations like data storage, security, and other “invisible” server-side functions that are essential to a seamless user experience.

Back-end developers worker with front-end developers, full-stack developers, product managers, and principal architects to ensure they are fulfilling the overall vision and providing the desired outcomes.

Full-Stack Developer

A full-stack developer or full-stack engineer toggles the line between the front-end and back-end development teams. They are an integral part of a web development team and are vital because they understand the entire process and can communicate with anyone on the team, as well as with product managers and decision-makers.

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RELATED: What Kind of Developer Do You Really Need?

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How to Write a Web Developer Job Description

There are some important factors to consider when getting started to help you write a detailed job description that attracts your ideal candidates. One of those is know exactly what kind of role your team needs. With web developers, that starts with knowing what developer you need. Then you can get into the nitty gritty.

Some questions about the job that will help you moving in the right direction include:

• What are the job’s responsibilities?
• What qualifications should our ideal candidates have for this position?
• What objectives do we have for the candidate who fills this role?
• What are “must-have” qualifications versus desired or preferred qualifications?
• What previous education should our candidates have?
• What types of skills and practical experience would benefit our organization?

These questions offer you an invaluable launch pad in coming up with a final web developer job posting.

What a Job Description for a Web Developer Might Look Like

Now that you have some key components in place, it’s time to think about what your web developer job description might contain and look like.

Here is a sample to give you a map for your job description.

Describe Who You Need for the Role

The role of a web developer can vary from one organization to the next, depending on the programming languages used and the products in development. Give candidates a preview of what you want from them as well as your mission, goals, processes, and expectations, and include the following:

• The degree of technical expertise versus artistic capabilities needed.
• An ability to create, maintain, upgrade, and update client websites.
• A capability to proficiently work with CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and other web services and applications.
• The desire and ability to provide a quick, positive impact on the organization’s brand.

Provide Your Objectives for This Position

It is helpful for candidates to understand your overarching needs for this role and how they can help fulfill their responsibilities to suit your objectives.

Here are some objectives you might provide to your candidates in the job description:

• Develop code, applying best practices, for websites that offer responsive design and mobile capabilities. Create and test necessary codes.to ensure success.
• Create websites and the necessary interfaces, utilizing standard HTML and CSS best practices. Bring in data from back-end services and databases for additional information and support.
• Work with your team, creating and maintaining workflows for optimal communication and transparency throughout the development process.
• Complete testing schedules that inspect browsers and address any issues.
• Stay up to date on industry knowledge, trends, and technologies.

Key Responsibilities

It is always helpful for job candidates to have an idea of what a typical day at work might look like. Provide some key responsibilities you expect your web developer to fulfill, such as:

• Meet regularly with web development team members, stakeholders, and product managers to review the project’s progress and scope and to review various requirements and specifications.
• Create and maintain operational tools, processes, and systems.
• Monitor software to ensure stability and quality assurance.
• Review and make customer edits.
• Develop plans for new projects.
• Recommend improvements for existing websites.
• Conduct file backups to local directories.
• Perform user interface (UI) design and coding.
• Design reusable objects, such as email templates and wireframes for web pages.

Required Skills and Qualifications

It is important to know what, when, and where your candidates studied for this profession. Web development is a continually changing area, so it is important to know how current your candidates’ knowledge is. While you don’t necessarily want to rule out someone without your ideal credentials, it is still valuable to know where they stand upon hiring.

Here are some criteria to add to this section:

• A strong dedication to ongoing learning, innovation, and problem-solving.
• Experience in planning, designing, and developing different products in various industries.
• In-depth knowledge of programming languages, web applications, and web services, such as API, HTML, HTML5, CSS, cross-browser compatibility, JavaScript, PHP, interface design, and security principles.
• Ability to use content management systems like Drupal and WordPress.
• Proficiency with Windows and Linux environments.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

Some areas are negotiable. You can seek some extras here since you might already have a good idea of your candidate based on the required skills and qualifications. These factors might create the necessary decision-making distinctions among your top candidates.

• The school where they studied, along with the degree and any relevant certifications. For example, you might want someone with a bachelor’s degree in multimedia design or web design.
• Proven success in project planning and coordination.
• Experience with e-commerce applications and development.
• The ability to implement web development workflows with tools like GitHub or Trello.

Are You Ready to Write an Attention-Grabbing Web Developer Job Description?

This article should help you start the process of writing a web developer job description that attracts ideal candidates. Our Insight Global team is here to provide more help you find and hire the talent you need to scale your business quickly and successfully.

We can help you write a job description for whatever role you’re looking to hire FOR FREE! Just let us know your hiring needs below.