What is a Magento Developer?
You will understand what a Magento developer is from the name itself if you are familiar with Magento, a content management system used to build e-commerce websites for businesses. Since e-commerce has grown significantly, the demand for such programmers is high. Programmers are responsible for developing, customising, and maintaining the websites built using the platform.
Magento developers install and configure your online store from scratch, create custom themes and functionality, upgrade the store, and optimise its performance. Many larger companies have a team of such programmers, who can be front-end or back-end developers. This article will discuss them and some of the must-have skills required.
Reason for the high demand
As mentioned earlier, the demand for programmers is rising and is not going anywhere soon. It is because Magento is an object-oriented PHP framework with cutting-edge features capable of building strong and exceptional e-commerce websites to attract customers. So there is no other way around it other than its growth in the future.
Hence, their demand will show substantial growth in the following years without fail. When taking the numbers, the number of programmers had already reached 300,000 worldwide in 2021. The requirements and the vacancies for them are expected to witness a significant hike as there is a significant inclination towards eCommerce development in the industry.
By 2030, more than 40 million software programmers might be working worldwide if the current trend keeps going well. Undoubtedly, the demand for programmers will continue to grow exponentially due to the growing importance of programming languages and open-source features in eCommerce.
Types of Magento Programmers
Professional Magento developers must accomplish certain tasks as freelancers or full-time employees to handle ecommerce development’s back-end and front-end processes. They are classified into two categories based on the role played. It includes front-end programmers and back-end programmers, as mentioned above.
- Frontend Magento programmers
- Backend Magento programmers
1. Front-end Magento programmers
As the name suggests, front-end programmers are responsible for working on or coding the front end of a website. It means they are mainly responsible for the store’s look, ensuring the effective implementation of the design that the web designer created on the web. Since online stores with a visually appealing and responsive user interface can grab visitors’ attention, the importance of front-end programmers is increasing.
2. Back-end Magento programmers
The duties of back-end programmers will be to integrate the work done by the front-end programmers. They are focused on creating features for the store and adding them via Magento extensions or bespoke code. The additional duties include building libraries for future use, creating new features per the demands of the product team, ensuring regular and effective client and customer communication, and much more.
Classification based on experience
Essentially, programmers must improve their abilities to provide multi-faceted stores to their clients. Their experience is equally crucial because it improves the value of their skills. So based on their experience, they are classified as junior, middle, senior, and lead developers.
- Junior programmers are hired as trainees when they demonstrate strong theoretical knowledge, motivation, and exceptional performance in both the interview and technical test tasks. They will not have any experience and will have to gain it under the guidance of senior programmers.
- The middle programmers are the ones with two to three years of experience. They will have technical soundness, good management skills, and good communication skills. If they are good at management, they may get the position of senior manager soon.
- Senior programmers will have about five years of experience.
- Lead programmers, on the other hand, require a minimum of seven years of experience.
In addition, depending on the needs of the project and the budget, developers are hired as freelancers or full-time employees in a development company. Both types of employment have their own benefits. Some programmers prefer being freelancers, while others prefer full time jobs with fixed salaries.
Must have skills for Magento programmer
Make sure the developer you select has complete knowledge of and sufficient experience with all of these Magento development-related aspects. Programmers must have some must-have skills, as it is a complex platform that requires certain skills to master. So the skills include:
- For any eCommerce store to be built successfully on the platform, a good Magento programmer must possess a solid understanding of the platform itself.
- Programmers should have extensive experience in web development and be knowledgeable about HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
- Since design and programming issues are likely to come up frequently for programmers, having excellent problem-solving abilities and the capacity to overcome unforeseen challenges will be advantageous.
- Programmers with the necessary skills can create custom CMS themes. Any seasoned programmer must be able to create or customise CMS themes because they will always be required to do so to satisfy their clients’ needs.
- programmers may also need to master the integrated development environment (IDE), which assists in programming and automates some processes.
- It is also helpful for programmers to understand version control software.
In this article, you read through the details about Magento developers, the reasons why they are in high demand, and the skills they should acquire in order to be successful. Most software development companies hire them according to their experience, technical knowledge of the platform, and soft and hard skills. The information in this article will help you learn more about being a Magento developer.
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Pictures: Canva
The author: Sascha Thattil works at Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.
