Front End Developer

Learn more about the front end developer job: tasks, educational background, skills, salary and employment opportunities.

Summary:

Front End
Job Description
Educational background
Skills
Salary
Employment

Front End

There can be many layers between the hardware part and the user within a software architecture. For each of them, we can say that there is a back end part and a front end one. The front is an abstraction that will simplify inferiors elements by providing an easy to use interface, while the back usually deals with the business layer and data storage. To simplify, we can say that the front end (or client) is the part manipulated by the user. The back end code is placed on a server, often located very far from the user.

Job Description

Web ecosystems are increasingly rich, for example they are made up of several web portals (CMS PHP) and mobile applications (Android, iOS, WindowsPhone). In this context, the front end developer is likely to take over all or some elements of the front end.

A young front end engineer will focus on the development, the validation, the testing and the documentation parts of projects, while the more experienced programmers will be involved in the functional and technical analysis of the need.

That’s it for the “classical” profiles.

In the last few years, professionals in web design, who have acquired knowledge of development, have been added to these engineers such as UX designers for example.

These web designers use DTP tools (Desktop publishing) in order to design their models. They also integrate these tools, like traditional developers do.

So, the delimitation development front end/web design is not as clear as before.

Become Front End Developer

To become a front end developer, a Master’s Degree in software development from an engineering school or the university is required.

“Web design” profiles have mixed courses, combining computer development and studies in the field of multimedia, for example at the Gobelins school in France.