Effective web development is a key part of the process of delivering a business’s online strategy. Randstad Technologies provides web developer recruitment services for a number of leading firms in the UK and its long-term expertise in the IT field offers many excellent opportunities for those with the requisite skills.
Web developers provide the technical knowhow and creative solutions that help corporate websites run smoothly. Web technology is increasing and becoming even more vital for communication, sales, learning, teach.
This means that almost any private or public company will depend on a web developer in some way or format. At this stage, nearly every single company has a websites. This website needs developing, changing and improving to take in style, service, and delivery improvements.
At any given time they may be responsible for a range of tasks, including building new features (slider screens on website home pages for example), maintaining content management (CMS) systems, ensuring cross-platform, cross-device compatibility and making sure that changes and updates to functionality are made in accordance with the company’s marketing plan.
Increasingly the online persona of a company is shaping sales and services, web development is therefore vital in the delivery of the customer experience. Millions of businesses worldwide use web technology to drive their sales and capture marketing information for future use.
Web developers may find openings with major national or international clients, or work for one of the many public sector bodies that constantly need to develop their public-facing strategy through the internet.
Projects could include designing new web solutions from scratch or building on existing architecture to improve user experience and increase business profitability.
Required skills
Experience of industry standard software, platform and languages is essential, ideally in a hands-on situation. This could have been achieved through research, working on prototypes or modifications, exploring new developments and solutions, re-engineering sites or maintaining them. To add to highly developed software skills, web developers should be able to show an awareness of how businesses operate and have a good grasp of how changes affect users, systems and business continuity.
Typical tasks
All companies need web developers at some level. In some cases clients will want to maintain the site in-house, but others may want to contract a web developer to carry out that maintenance.
Web developers will work closely with a client in the early stages to assess their needs and understand exactly what is wanted before they begin building the initial architecture of a site.
They will add web applications such as shopping carts, login pages, content management systems and webmail, plan how to integrate the system into existing client networks, work with a web designer to shape the site’s appearance, and test and debug where necessary before going live.
Clients have different ways of managing sites i.e. through in-house or through a third party, meaning that your expectations and work style may differ accordingly. When accepting a job as a contract web developer, it is important to identify exactly what the client is expecting from you in terms of what you will be developing, hours of work you expect the project to take and what level of support you will offer after the end of a project.
Qualifications
It is usual for a web developer to have an IT qualification, usually a degree or foundation degree, or a BTEC HND/HNC. Relevant subjects would include multimedia design, business information systems, web development or design and computer programming. Further training in many of the popular programming languages is available, with excellent options for developers who can use Java, SQL, Opensource, BI, VBA and SharePoint among others.
There is excellent career growth potential for experienced web developers with good qualifications and the ability to work with a variety of languages.