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Experience
8 years
AVAILABILITY
Full-time
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Experience
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AVAILABILITY
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Experience
6 years
AVAILABILITY
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Isidora R.
Experience
3 years
AVAILABILITY
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Experience
20 years
AVAILABILITY
Full-time
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Experience
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If your business creates and stores a lot of data, consider hiring a database developer. A skilled database developer can create databases to store, secure, and organize your data. They can also rebuild indexes, update statistics, and reconfigure settings to boost your database's performance.
However, picking the right database developer for your team can be challenging. At first glance, the internet appears to be chockfull of database talent, especially if you're looking at job sites like LinkedIn and Fiverr. But only a small fraction of these developers have the skills, personality, and experience to help your company store and manage data.
That's why we've written this comprehensive guide for hiring database developers. We'll cover what database development is, what a database developer does, and why and how to hire database developers. Along the way, we'll share tips for identifying essential database developer skills, database dev salaries, how to write a compelling job ad, and sample interview questions for database development talent.
Database development refers to the development and maintenance of database systems. The goal of database development is to help companies use their data effectively and efficiently.
Developers can create databases to manage any kind of data for any purpose. Common examples of databases include:
Database developers are primarily responsible for designing, creating, and maintaining efficient databases that meet your needs and expectations. They're also required to monitor database performance and troubleshoot problems as needed.
Other duties include:
Now, let's take a look at why and how you can hire a database developer.
Many businesses erroneously assume that database developers are unnecessary luxuries. After all, they can just get their administrative or IT staff to use MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, right?
However, training your existing staff to use MySQL and other database tools isn't enough. For one, they don't have the skills to manage large amounts of data. They also don't have the skills and experience to design, implement, and deploy database management solutions.
Database developers, on the other hand, have well-honed data management skills. They can also transform, manipulate, and create data pipelines to accelerate database operations. Other benefits include:
As you can see, hiring a database developer offers many advantages. The right choice can help you design, program, and implement new databases for your company. They can also monitor and manage database programs so that only authorized personnel have access to enterprise data.
However, before you start hiring, you need to consider potential candidates' skills, experience levels, and salaries.
First, let's take a look at the hard and soft skills you should look for in a database developer.
The best candidate should have the following hard or technical skills:
Your database dev should have a solid understanding of structured query language (SQL) principles. A standard language for accessing and manipulating databases, SQL is a language for relational databases — that is, collections of tables that store structured data.
At a minimum, your hire should know how to do the following:
Note that there are many frameworks for SQL. While you can't expect your hire to know all of them, they should be familiar with at least one of the following:
The ideal hire should also know how to use NoSQL databases.
Top NoSQL databases include:
As their name suggests, NoSQL databases are non-tabular databases that store data differently from SQL tables. Because they're unstructured, NoSQL databases can come in a variety of types, such as:
Database developers need to know more than just SQL. Even the most specialized database devs use languages like Perl and Python to automate tasks outside of the database environment.
As such, your hire should know at least two of the following languages:
Besides hard skills, the ideal hire should also have solid soft skills, such as teamwork and communication skills. Pay close attention to these skills when interviewing applicants — they will have a large impact on whether a candidate is a good fit for your team.
Database devs need sharp teamwork skills to work with colleagues across the information technology (IT) department. In any given week, a database developer may have to collaborate with:
Data analytics and digital transformation may also require your hires to work with experts from other departments, such as marketing, quality assurance, and operations.
To work well on a team, database developers need to know when to speak and listen. They also need to have empathy for team members. Specifically, they need to know how others are feeling and understand their perspectives.
The best database developer for your team should be able to solve and troubleshoot issues quickly. They should also be able to:
Thanks to groundbreaking advances in big data, mobile technology, Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing, businesses are capturing more data than ever before.
Accordingly, creativity is an important trait to look for in a database developer. A creative database developer can easily create new procedures and methods for collecting, securing, storing, and deploying data.
Once you've created a list of must-have hard and soft skills, the next step is to research database developer salaries. A database developer's salary varies depending on skill and experience level. Let's take a look at the salaries and skills of entry-level, junior, and senior database developers.
Entry-level database developers have no working experience. They are usually fresh grads with bachelor's degrees in Computer Science, IT, and other related fields, but some are self-taught or graduates of boot camps. Since they have little to no professional experience, they have fewer skills and lower salaries than senior devs. According to ZipRecruiter, the average U.S.-based entry-level database developer earns $62,845 per year.
With two years of experience under their belt, junior database developers are more experienced than entry-level developers. However, because they still need a lot of training and mentorship from seniors, they have similar salaries as entry-level database developers. According to ZipRecruiter, the average U.S.-based junior database developer earns $62,491 per year.
As you can see, junior and entry-level are technically two separate skill levels. However, most companies conflate the two because they have similar skill levels and salaries. They also need mentorship and educational opportunities to reach their full potential, so they're not the best choice if you're looking for a hire who can start contributing to your projects right away.
Most companies expect junior and entry-level database devs to have the following skills:
Senior database developers have more than five years of experience. They have ample experience working for companies and know how to plan, create, and recover databases.
The top skills for senior database devs are:
According to Glassdoor, the average U.S.-based senior database developer earns a whopping $118,733 per year.
After determining the salary range for potential hires, you need to write a comprehensive database developer job description to attract top-notch talent. At a minimum, your job description should have the following sections:
Here's a good example of a database developer job ad:
Revelo is looking for a Remote Senior Database Developer to join our international team. The successful candidate will work closely with different stakeholders to create leading-edge database solutions.
This position is open to Senior Database Developers in the following time zones:
Company Bio:
Revelo is a talent marketplace that matches FAANG-caliber Latin American developers with startups around the world. Learn more about us on our site, www.revelo.io.
Responsibilities:
Requirements:
Compensation and Benefits:
Schedule:
Last but not least, you need to write compelling interview questions for database developers.
Most companies ask straightforward, knowledge-based questions like "Define NoSQL" and "What is a database"?" These questions can tell you how well an applicant knows their stuff, but they leave out important details about their personality, experience, and work ethic.
To learn more about how well a candidate would fit into your team, ask personalized and open-ended questions. Here are some examples:
Hiring the best database developers can be an uphill battle, especially since there are so many candidates to test and interview.
Luckily, there's Revelo. We can help you source, hire, and manage FAANG-caliber database devs on one platform. All of our talent has been rigorously pre-vetted for their skills, experience, and English proficiency.
Talk to us today to start hiring.
Yes, if for any reason you find the developer you hire isn't a good fit within the first 14 days - you pay nothing or we can find you a replacement at no additional cost.
Hiring a full-time developer through Revelo is a simple 3-step process. First, you tell us your hiring needs. Second, we match you to the best developers within 3 days. Third, you interview the candidates you like and hire the one you like most.
Build your remote software engineering team in any tech stack. Our talent pool of senior software developers are pre-screened across 100+ skills.
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