How to master an IT profession that will never die

In our era of rapid growth and development, it is difficult to guarantee that a chosen profession will always remain relevant and well-paid. But what if there is a solution? There is a profession that will remain relevant in the foreseeable future, evolving and adapting to the changes in our world. Meet the backend developer.

To help beginner backend developers choose the right strategy for their career development, we asked Nikolai Kindyakov, Head of Backend Development at Kolesa Group, to share insights about this profession.

Who are backend developers and what do they do

These are specialists who develop the internal part of a product that resides on the server and is hidden from users. They handle the "insides" of a website or application: working on what people do not see and do not directly interact with. If we talk about modern mass-market development, it can be schematically represented as follows:

The backend concentrates all the business logic of applications or websites. Backend developers determine where and how to store user data. Because of this, these specialists are deeply immersed in the project, understanding how it works and why each element is necessary.

Not all IT projects require a beautiful interface or mobile applications, but implementing the core business logic is indispensable everywhere. This is precisely what backend developers primarily do. Years and decades may pass, but such specialists will continue to be in demand in the market. Employers are looking for specialists at all levels: from intern to senior.

How much do backend developers earn

According to the Kolesa Group study, the average salary of a Kazakhstani backend developer in 2021 was 712,000 tenge, with a median of 600,000 tenge.

Additionally, backend developers remain the most common specialization among all development directions in Kazakhstan — 45% (backend, frontend, mobile, QA, administration). In 2020, the share of backend development in Kazakhstan was 27%.

Where to start a career in backend development

I advise beginner developers at the start not to chase high salaries, but to join companies where they can grow quickly and gain as much experience as possible.

A technical education is necessary to start a career in this profession. However, this education does not necessarily have to be higher education. To take the first steps in development, one needs at least a basic understanding of programming. Anyone who is sufficiently motivated and ready to achieve their goal can become a developer. The key aspect of the developer profession is that you will always be learning. The emergence of new technologies, as well as the global growth of network users and its accessibility, present us with new challenges and set new tasks.

To build a career in a good company, hard skills — professional skills and competencies — are not enough. For a developer, this is obviously the ability to program. Employers are increasingly paying attention to soft skills — personal qualities that help in work but are not directly related to the profession: responsibility, communication skills, adherence to deadlines, and self-development. At Kolesa Group, "soft skills" play a crucial role.

Despite the huge leap in the computer industry over the last 20 years, we still have servers, devices, and users of client devices. We still need to store data, perform various operations, calculations, transformations, and so on on them. Moreover, the amount of data is increasing, making it more difficult to manage them, maintain their consistency, and perform distributed calculations. In my opinion, this is the foundation of the immortality of the backend developer profession.

Perhaps I am being too categorical, and a careful reader might remind me that concepts such as serverless, web3, and others exist. But if you dig deeper, you can come to the conclusion that serverless is not so serverless, and web3 is very much serverfull, where the client of the network essentially performs the server's work.

It may happen that you have a basic foundation, but it is not enough to get an offer for an intern or junior developer position. In this case, the best solution is to take courses or internships at the companies you would like to join. For example, at Kolesa Group, we have paid internships through Kolesa Academy and free courses through Kolesa Upgrade for IT professions. This year, we developed a special program aimed at preparing people with minimal development background to the Junior 1 level. It is in a product IT company that has been operating in the market for a long time and has a substantial, stable development team that you can grow quickly not only as a developer but also comprehensively. The main thing is to absorb information around you.

Useful recommendations

1. Useful recommendations for beginner backend developers.

2. Roadmap for a backend developer.

3. Grading system of the backend department at Kolesa Group.