Now that you’re thinking of mastering the field of web development in Dubai, time to get acquainted with the important details. There’re three types of web developers namely; front-end, backend and full stack (hybrid: a combination of both “front and backend”). For now, we’ll focus on backend developers and look at what they do, the skills to harness and how to achieve success.

What backend developers do?

These individuals are responsible to look at and develop “server side” web applications. On the contrary, frontend developers takes into account all that happens before one hits a browser so in easy terms also known as the “client side”.

Although backend developers are more focused on working with inner web applications, they collaborate with frontend team by providing external web app elements of server side logic. This “logic” is added by using server side scripting language or coding such as Ruby on Rails or PHP.

Besides making functional web applications, backend developers are also responsible to optimise these apps to match efficiency and speed criterions as well as creating data storage solutions through a database.

This “database” is a critical component for all web-based applications as it store details such as users, comments, posts and more. MySQL, MongoDB and PostgreSQL are a few examples of databases.

Who backend developers work & collaborate with?

Whether you’re onto web development in Dubai or any other place per se, backend developers usually work in teams, collaborating with various departments in a corporate setting.

Components of a larger team include design, frontend (engineers, UI/UX architects) and then there’s a backend team.

Backend developers are mostly linked with software engineers looking into REST APIor Software Quality Assurance (SQA), network engineer or others. Roles and responsibilities are different!

Core skills & technologies

• Sufficient expertise with backend programming language or the framework that web development in Dubai relies upon.
• Basic to advance knowhow of frontend technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript for communicating with frontend team members.
• Capable to manage hosting platform including database and scaling application to handle load changes.
• Knowledge of security compliance and accessibility
• Hands-on experience with version control like Git.

How to harness this skillset?

Most of the backend developers and associated teams acquire formal training which comes through professional degree in Computer Science (CS). The only exception with backend developers is that they need having more concepts of data mining, write abstract algorithms and so on.

While the basics come from computer science degree, you needn’t worry if you’re ahead of the college years as crash courses and certifications are also offered by many different universities as well as internship.

Backend development courses

While institutes are the best option alongside academies offering certifications, you can find relevant backend development courses through online research.