- 1. What is Node.js?
- 2. Hire a Node JS Developer: Short Overview
- 3. Why do You Need to Hire Node.js developers?
- 4. Hiring Node.js Developer: Requirements and Responsibilities
- 5. Node.js Developer Skills
- 6. Step-by-Step Guide on How to Hire a Node.js Developer
- 7. How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Node JS Programmer?
- Your Turn to Hire Node.JS Developers from JayDevs
What is Node.js?
Is Node.js a programming language?
- No, Node.js is not a programming language.
- Node.js is also not a framework.
Node.js allows to develop server applications using JavaScript. In practice, Node.js is a software platform based on the V8 engine that converts JavaScript to machine code.
V8 is a Google engine with open source code, developed with С++. The goal of the V8 is to increase JS execution efficiency in web browsers.
For the first 20 years, JavaScript was mainly used to write client-side code. Since JavaScript could only be used for front-end development, programmers had to work with other languages and frameworks to create back-end components. Since Node.js surfaced, it has become a runtime environment that includes everything required to run a program written in JavaScript. According to Statista findings, Node JS ranks among the most used libraries, frameworks, and tools.
Hire Node.js Developer: Short Overview
- As of now, Node.js has over 91 thousand stars on GitHub, which is constantly growing.
- In the Stack Overflow 2020 survey, Node.js scored 51.4% in popularity among frameworks. In 2021, the numbers slightly dropped to 33.91% but the technology is still popular at number six.
- On indeed.com, there are now almost 19,000 job offers for Node.js developers worldwide.
The wide use of this environment can explain the growing demand for Node programmers. Node.js can be used in API development, IoT applications, chatbots, real-time collaboration tools, and much more.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that many global companies prefer to hire Node.js experts outside their offices. In addition, finding remote Node.js developers can help you achieve effortless hiring, cost optimization, faster web or app development process—aka faster time to market, and many other business values.
Benefits of Hiring a Professional Node JS Developer
“What sets Node JS apart is the ecosystem we have around it,” says Tracy Hinds, education community manager of the Node JS Foundation. “Node JS is open-source; it’s the core language that lives on the server side, and JavaScript lives on the website. That means there’s a pretty good chance, no matter what your language, that you’ll use JavaScript at some point if you’re developing for the web.”
So, thanks to Node experts you can create almost anything ranging from messaging applications to IoT applications. Node.js is the first choice when it comes to web app development or app development, thereby receiving numerous benefits in the process such as:
- Excellent performance and scalability
- Cross-platform development
- Ability to handle multiple requests
- Rich ecosystem
- First-class prototyping capabilities
- Complete and test all aspects of a web application quickly
Why do You Need to Hire Node.js developers
Node programmers can help you implement many of your business solutions.
API Development
JavaScript is used in both front-end and back-end sites. This way, the server can easily communicate with the front end via REST APIs using Node.js. Node.js also provides packages such as Express.js and Koa, which make building web applications even easier.
API development is the most common application of Node.js. This platform has many advantages. For example, due to the single-threaded nature of Node.js, application performance can increase by 20%. Other advantages include ease of development and monitoring.
JayDevs Node engineers can help you with the complete lifecycle of services that require data storage and processing. Our professionals can develop APIs for retail platforms, employment platforms, time trackers, healthcare, corporate, and many other projects.
Real-Time Chats
These are communication tools that allow you to send different data types in real time. Such chats are particularly common in social networks and e-commerce. Node.js, in turn, provides the functionality for building such chat features.
Due to its single-threaded asynchronous nature, Node.js is well-suited for handling real-time communications. It is easily scalable and often used to build chatbots. Node.js also makes it easy to create additional chat features such as multi-user chat and push notifications.
The developers at JayDevs can help you develop a variety of real-time chatbots ranging from messaging apps to live chats for your site.
Internet of Things (IoT) Applications Development
IoT applications, typically, consist of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors, etc. to collect, send, and act on data gathered from their surroundings. The main reason for the widespread use of Node.js in IoT development is due to its ability to handle multiple requests and events. In addition, IoT devices create large amounts of data that need to be analyzed. Thus, the development environment must have low memory resource requirements. This is exactly what Node.js is.
Data Streaming
Of course, you would be aware of a company like Netflix. Netflix has successfully used Node.js to reduce the launch time of its application so that millions of subscribers can view content faster. This is mainly because Node.js is lightweight and fast, plus Node.js provides a built-in streaming API. These streams allow users to pass requests between each other and send data directly to their destination.
Real-Time Collaboration Tools
Many popular collaboration tools have been developed with the help of Node.js. For example, Trello and Slack are based on Node.js. Thanks to Node.js architecture, many users can edit the same document in the same environment.
What Companies Are Already Using Node.js?
Global companies widely use Node.js because of its comprehensive functionality and broad application capabilities. For example, PayPal opted for Node.js because the company needed to process many transactions simultaneously.
Another well-known example is LinkedIn, which chose to develop in Node.js to optimize its mobile application. Since 2011, the LinkedIn mobile app backend has been built on Node JS.
Uber was at the forefront of Node.js users. They chose this platform because it provides the following advantages: easy error checking, high performance, and continuous development.
I think you’ve now noticed a trend in why most of these companies use Node.js to process their internal operations—it’s fast. Using its structure greatly speeds up server-side processing and data transfer.
Hiring a Node.js Developer: Requirements and Responsibilities
When you hire Node JS developers, you should consider the tasks they’re going to fulfill. Probable tasks might include:
- Developing server-side logic,
- Ensuring high performance and responsiveness to requests from the front-end and integrating the front-end elements into the application,
- Connect back-end code to the front-end, create new internal and public API endpoints, and modify existing services to support additional functionality,
- Maintenance of the central database,
- Work with cloud-based services,
- Writing and execution of unit tests.
Node.js Developer Skills
To accomplish project assignments, a developer needs certain skills to efficiently address these tasks. Skills are divided into soft and technical.
More specifically, soft skills are required to make the working process efficient. Whereas technical skills are directly linked with application development.
Node.js Developer: Soft Skills Review
A soft skills interview stage is needed so that you can understand the candidate’s personality and check his communication skills, ability to cope with difficulties, critical thinking, and ability to work in a team. Usually, clients who want to hire a Node JS developer:
Check the candidate’s values, and whether they align with the company’s values. Additionally, clients assess whether the developer fits the requirements and goals of the project, is focused on achieving those goals, and being a team player.
To avoid lengthy vetting, start with the soft skills interview. This way, you can weed out candidates who don’t fit the project requirements; therefore, you don’t need to test their technical skills.
Junior Node.js Developer: Technical Skills
Junior engineers typically have one year of experience. With this experience, junior Node.js programmers should be familiar with Node.js LTS documentation, as well as have a solid knowledge of JavaScript (i.e. promises, async programming, classes, functions, and other aspects of JS).
When it comes to the back end, your junior Node.js specialists should understand how to connect to third-party payment services.
Additionally, a Node JS junior developer should be familiar with HTML5 and CSS3 technologies. These professionals should know how to work with Node.js frameworks, including Express, Nest, Fastify, and others. Node developers can use these frameworks to write RESTful APIs.
In addition, newcomers should understand the basics of testing, such as how to write unit tests.
Knowledge of databases is also essential, so developers should understand the basics of NoSQL (e.g., MongoDB and Redis), SQL (e.g., MySQL or PostgreSQL), and other popular ORMs such as Sequelize, TypeORM, and Mongoose.
Strong junior Node.js developers also know how to work with Passport.js and can implement, for example, the passport-jwt.Strategy.
Middle Node.js Developer: Technical Skills
Middle Node.js developers usually have more than 3 years of experience. They have more in-depth skills than the junior programmers mentioned above.
They should also be familiar with modern JS tools, including TypeScript. Additionally, knowledge of CI pipelines (e.g., CircleCI or AWS CodePipeline) is a plus for the average Node.js developer.
Senior Node.js Developer: Technical Skills
Senior Node.js developers have more than 5 years of experience. In addition to the tools and skills listed above, they have more advanced specifications related to Node.js. For example, senior experts typically also have experience with client-side frameworks such as Vue, React, and Angular.
Some requirements apply to all levels. For example, all NodeJS programmers must write an effective code that complies with standard practices. In addition, your programmers must be familiar with best practices, code conventions, and code performance optimization.
They should be proficient with bug investigations and fixing, and databases and have experience with cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), have experience with microservices architecture, and be able to optimize and refactor a pre-written code.
Top 10 Node.js Packages Every Developer Needs to Know
When a developer is on the project and needs to implement frequently used functions, most likely, a ready solution is used. To make work with ready solutions more convenient, they are distributed in the form of packages. Thus, a package is a set of functionalities.
Node.js engineers benefit from more than a million packages with open-source code, available in NPM (Node Package Manager). The most popular packages lie at the base of many applications. The 2018 npm report findings state that 97% of application code is created with npm packages. Therefore, a developer doesn’t write code for thousands of modules and saves hours of development time.
When you hire Node.js app developers, they should be familiar with the most popular npm packages. Let’s briefly go over 10 of them:
1. Lodash—A utility library that makes JavaScript easier by taking the hassle out of working with arrays, numbers, objects, and strings.
Weekly Downloads: More than 39 million
2. Chalk—A third-party library that can be used for styling texts and creating your themes in a Node.js project.
Weekly Downloads: More than 102 million
3. Commander—A complete solution for Node.js command-line interfaces.
Weekly Downloads: More than 62 million
4. Bluebird—A fully-featured promise library with a focus on innovative features and performance.
Weekly Downloads: More than 21 million
5. Async—A module with powerful utility functions for working with asynchronous JavaScript.
Weekly Downloads: More than 37 million
6. Express—A fast, unopinionated, and minimalist web framework for Node.
Weekly Downloads: More than 16 million
7. Gulp—A streaming and fast-build system that favors code over config.
Weekly Downloads: More than 1.3 million
8. Webpack—A module bundler. The main purpose of a webpack is to create a bundle of JavaScript files to be used in the browser.
Weekly Downloads: More than 16 million
9. Jest—A javascript testing framework designed to ensure the correctness of any JavaScript codebase.
Weekly Downloads: More than 12 million
10. Debug— A tiny JavaScript debugging utility modeled after Node.js core’s debugging technique.
Weekly Downloads: More than 113 million
If you wish to dive deeper into NPM packages, we recommend that you directly visit Github. There you can study the specifics of the packages that may assist you for your mobile or web apps.
Step-by-Step Guide on How to Hire a Node.js Developer
Follow our step-by-step guide on hiring the best Node.js developers for your project:
Step 1: Create a clear job description
Create a clear job description showing potential engineers your requirements, responsibilities, and the benefits you offer.
How should I create a clear job description? To do so, you can consider the following questions:
- Briefly describe your company
- Tell me about the project(s) you are working on
- List the technical requirements for the candidate (i.e., education, experience, technology stack, and portfolio)
- List the soft skills required for the project
- Provide details about the tasks expected from the Node programmer each day
- List the benefits of working for your company
The job offer should illustrate the culture and values of your company as this will be your first filter for candidates.
Step 2: Searching for candidates and ways to hire a Node developer
In-house Node.js Developer
If you plan to hire an in-house developer, you will have to pay him a monthly salary and all the financial benefits. An in-house developer is the traditional hiring model. When hiring a Node.js developer for an in-house team, you need to consider aspects such as the labor-intensive hiring process, providing a suitable workplace for the developer, and managing payrolls.
Owning your staff implies a fixed cost. You have direct access to your experts and can control how well they are doing. But at the same time, this option is the most expensive one compared to the other two ways of hiring a Node.js developer.
Benefits of hiring an in-house developer include:
- Access to programmers at any time,
- No language barriers,
- Ideal for long-term projects,
- Full control over the development process.
Drawbacks of hiring full-time node.js developers include:
- Finding, interviewing, and recruiting takes an average of 60 days,
- Need expenses for vacations and sick leaves,
- Renting premises, buying equipment, and taxes.
Top Platforms to Hire In-house Node Developers
If you are looking for full-time Node developers for a long-term partnership, the following sites can help you: Indeed, Getwork, Monster, Hired, and Glassdoor. These sites are considered some of the most in-demand sites for finding in-house Node developers.
Freelance Node.js Developer
Freelancers seem to be the most attractive option. There are lots of freelancers and lots of resources to access them. However, hiring Node.js developers in this way can be quite risky. You can’t get direct access to Node experts; there’s the possibility of missed deadlines, late responses to your questions, and not being fully immersed in your product due to freelancers working on multiple projects at once. On the other hand, freelancers are self-employed and can be experienced professionals with various projects under their belt.
Pros of hiring a freelance Node.js developer:
- Cheap,
- Self-employed engineers,
- A wide range of specialists.
Cons of hiring a freelance Node.js developer:
- Deadlines may not be met,
- Programmers can disappear at any time,
- Possible language barrier,
- Different time zones,
- Management complexity,
- No NDA and no signed contract between the two parties.
Top Platforms to Hire Freelance NodeJS Developers
If you are certain about hiring a freelance Node.js developer for your project, check out Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer to find the right candidate.
Dedicated Software Development Team Company or Outsourcing Companies
The dedicated development team company already has its team of qualified Node developers. So, if you lack certain skills or resources, you can hire Node.js developers from a dedicated company with experienced engineers and professionals. Hiring a full development team is ideal when you need a self-directed team that can take over the development of your project. Also, when you want to lead a team but don’t have an experienced developer with the skills you need.
This option is very popular and widely used due to its great talent pool of different experts with different skills and costs. You can use this approach for both small and large projects.
Advantages of hiring a dedicated NodeJS developer:
- Cost-effective because you only pay for the web development or mobile app development of your product,
- Quality work,
- High qualifications and experience of programmers,
- The large talent pool of engineers with different skills,
- Less time spent on hiring,
- Every development aspect can be discussed with your project manager.
Cons of hiring a dedicated NodeJS developer:
- Possible language barrier and different time zones.
Top Platforms to Outsource Node Developers
If you decide to outsource development services, you can hire dedicated Node.js developers in Clutch and Goodfirms. There you will find a list of companies you can trust and the reviews of clients who have already worked with programmers from these companies. In some cases, you’ll even find price lists for hiring Node JS developers.
To summarize, it’s best to start the hiring process by identifying your project requirements, defining your target audience, and, of course, understanding what MVP features need to be implemented.
Step 3: Prepare for the interview
Interviews usually involve two phases: the HR interview or soft skills interview and the technical interview. What’s the difference?
The HR interview or soft skills interview is when you can test the developer’s English language level and communication skills. Therefore, prepare a list of questions that will allow you to assess how the candidate can work in a team, their ability to meet your deadlines, and whether they know about the latest trends in Node.js development. For example, inquire about the latest web developer trends.
The technical interview is aimed at checking whether the Node JS engineer can cope with your technical requirements. All questions should be directly related to the needs of your product and the skills you are looking for. The person conducting this phase of the interview must be technically savvy. If you don’t have good technical knowledge and a CTO-type person to conduct this interview, then your best bet is to hire outsourced Node JS developers or dedicated Node developers.
Step 4. Choose a toolkit for interviews and follow-up meetings (if you hire remote Node.js developers)
There is no golden mean here. Here are a few examples:
- Communication: Gmail, Skype, Zoom,
- Project Management Tools: Jira, Basecamp, Trello,
- Storing and Sharing Files: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox,
- Security: Lastpass, Cleverfiles.
Test out the tools; most of the paid ones offer free trials. Your goal is to assemble a set of tools that meet the specific needs of your team and project.
Step 5: Prepare and submit a test task
The test task must be development-related so that you can see the candidate in action and their practical knowledge of Node.js development.
The test task will allow you to test candidates’ skills and their willingness to work for your company. First, the fact that a candidate is willing to spend several hours on a task should indicate that they are responsible and flexible. Finding solutions is also a sign that the Node.js developer is promising and can bring new perspectives to the existing team. Second, you test their technical knowledge and way of thinking in practice.
How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Node JS Programmer?
We will show you a rough estimate of Node developers’ hourly rates to help you choose the right region and approach. Dedicated software development companies, outsourcing companies, or freelancers very often work at an hourly rate.
That’s why we’ve divided this paragraph into two sub-modules—one with an annual rate for in-house employees if you want to hire in-house node.js developers, the other with hourly rates if you plan to hire freelancers, dedicated Node.js developers, or outsourcing Node.js developers.
Let’s start with Node.js hourly rates.
Node.js Developers’ Hourly Rates
Hourly rates for junior, middle, and senior NodeJS experts:
Hourly rates for outsourcing and dedicated software development companies may differ. We have collected data from websites such as GoodFirms and Clutch and derived approximate hourly rates for regions.
Node JS Developers’ Average Salary
Factors such as years of experience, hiring model, and location influence individual engineers’ rates. Therefore, the annual salary of NodeJS developers varies from $68,000 to $115,000.
Consider the budget you plan to spend when you want to hire a Node.js developer.
Based on the data from Neuvoo and Glassdoor, we provide Node.js Developer annual salary (US average annual salary without additional cost).
Your Turn to Hire Node.js Developers from JayDevs
We’ve previously written about how hard it is to find and hire the best Node.js developers. But now you know where to look, what to look for, how to inform your requirements, and more.
By hiring a Node.js developer at JayDevs, you can benefit greatly. Our company is one of the leading dedicated software development companies in Lithuania. 93% of our developers are senior NodeJS developers and higher. Whatever your needs, all our specialists, including Node.js developers for hire, offer ongoing support for your product. We ensure regular communication with clients and adhere to the best current trends in development. Thus, all this allows us to create better projects for our clients and scale the team without sacrificing performance. Contact us to get the best NodeJS expert help right now.
