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Profession: Mobile Developer

In 2010, a birthday friend of mine asked for a translation book for Android development as a gift. There were two unusual things in this fact: the book was not available, and he worked as the simplest civil servant and had a humanitarian managerial education. I was surprised, but I got a book - I brought it from a trip to Moscow. Two months after presenting the gift, he sat with me in a cafe and poked on the screen of a mobile phone, demonstrating the first application related to accounting for goods for one company - his first order. I worked as an engineer in telecom and conceptually appreciated the idea, but did not think that mobile development would be everywhere. By the way, a friend took $ 300 for the application, the customer plowed on it for more than two years. Well, a friend stubbornly downloaded skills, developed the same application for free, and eventually became a mobile developer in a huge company. 

Today, everyone is eager for mobile development: from engineers to philologists. It seems to them that they have found a gold mine and it is about to give millions of income. Meanwhile, finding a good mobile developer is not so simple. Because a good application is a complex architecture, meticulous design and intensive work on usability. You can’t cut it on your knee.


Who is it?


At first glance, it seems that everything is simple: a mobile developer is someone who develops programs for mobile devices. That's right. But most people outside the IT world mean mobile devices as smartphones and especially advanced ones - tablets. But we all know that mobile devices are not only our favorite gadgets, wearable electronics, but also various scientific devices, components of research systems based on gadgets, components of the Internet of things. This is a huge world of devices, which will become more and more - mobile applications are in demand by ordinary users, business, medicine, science, etc. Therefore, the profession of a mobile developer is definitely the profession of the future, in any case, the next 10-15 years, for sure. 

Where is it needed?


Today, mobile developers are in demand everywhere: corporate applications have mobile versions, mass media have mobile applications, business actively translates its loyalty programs into applications (which of us do not have different retail applications - from Ribbon and Auchan to RivGauche and L'Etoile), etc. . A mobile application is a guarantee that you will remain in the hands of your client, and almost all companies understand this. Therefore, mobile developers are needed absolutely everywhere. I will list the most promising industries that today's students who want to enter the world of mobile development (and generally everyone) can focus on.

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In general, it is thought that the COVID-19 pandemic will change the world and a new long-term demand will be formed for applications for the remote everything, deliveries for every restaurant and cafe, training, sports, etc. This will lead to an increase in demand for mobile development and for mobile developers. So, in addition to the objective dynamics of the market, force majeure intervened, which for mobile development will bring certain bonuses. 

average salary


Let's see the salary at Habr Career - according to the data for the 2nd half of 2019. 
Specialist levelaverage salary
Intern (Intern)26 272 rub.
JuniorRUB 59,061
Middle114 908 rub.
Senior187 925 rub.
Presenter (Lead)200 915 rub.

As you can see, a feature of the mobile development market is a big step from the trainee to June and from June to Middle: between these levels, wages are almost doubled. An important feature: wages grow only with the development of a developer.

Basic Professional Requirements


The mobile development stack is actively changing, therefore, choosing mobile development, you should be ready to absorb new information, study manuals in large quantities and constantly rebuild. Major mobile platforms are constantly updating the stack and developing it. In terms of the volume of literature studied for a mobile developer, this profession can be compared, for example, with the profession of therapist. Simply put, without constant reading and mastering the new principles of working with code, you will be a govnokoder. 

The specific requirements for the stack are determined by the tasks of the company, by the fact that it used previously and even by the middle age of the development team. But in general, you can identify several key requirements that are likely to be in the desired position.

  • Android: knowledge of Android SDK, Java, Kotlin, Scala (to a lesser extent), Rest / SOAP, various APIs, SQLite, etc. 
  • iOS: Objective-C, C #, Swift, knowledge of Apple Development Guidelines

For both platforms:

  • knowledge of structures and algorithms
  • knowledge of the principles of OOP (which includes Java, Objective-C, Swift)
  • understanding of the principles of design and design of mobile applications
  • knowledge of network protocols
  • knowledge of SQL
  • skills on the App Store and Google Play
  • multithreading skills (increasingly)
  • Flutter (wildly growing in popularity)

In addition, there are many standards in mobile development and you need to know them, or at least know where to find them and how to use them in real practical work.
Intern (Intern)JuniorMiddleSeniorPresenter (Lead)
  1. Android development
  2. C #
  3. Java

  1. Android development
  2. Kotlin
  3. Java
  4. Swift
  5. IOS development

  1. Android development
  2. Swift
  3. Kotlin
  4. IOS development
  5. Java

  1. Swift
  2. Kotlin
  3. IOS development
  4. Android development
  5. Java

  1. Android development
  2. Kotlin
  3. IOS development
  4. Swift
  5. Objective-C

Top 5 technologies that are in demand among specialists according to “Habr Careers”, the 2nd half of 2019

In addition to technical knowledge, it is necessary to understand the basics of the sphere in which you are going to work - this will make it easier for a programmer to understand the needs and problems of users of a mobile application. At a minimum, this can be a basic textbook on the profile of the company, as a maximum - close communication with the sales team and testing and constant research of the client’s profile.

Important personal qualities


A mobile developer is stressful, stressful work associated with constant communication, with nerves that will certainly overtake you when you start reading user reviews on the work of your application;) Therefore, a future mobile developer should discover some important qualities.

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  • Readiness for lifelong learning - guidelines are constantly changing, Google and Apple hold interesting and useful events, therefore it is important to manage to “grab” all the information on the fly and have time to drag it into production.

In one of the previous series of the “Profession”, I wrote that the front-end and back-end programmer should be attentive to new developments, new programming languages ​​and technology stacks, but not to drag everything new into the product thoughtlessly. In mobile development, the situation is different: it is important not only to learn about the new technology, it is important to use it quickly and competently to get ahead of competitive applications and comply with platform changes or, for example, the design and logic of mobile devices. 

The need for knowledge of foreign languages


Here are some key resources for mobile developers.



Most of them are in English and without them, as if without hands, nothing will work. Therefore, for a mobile application developer, knowledge of English is a real must have. By the way, all Google and Apple conferences are also held in English. What level of mastery you choose is your decision, but in general for a confident reading, listening and understanding of homogeneous technical information, you need a minimum of Upper-Intermediate.

Where to study


In contrast to programming of a different profile, mobile development in universities is extremely poorly presented, therefore this, so to speak, is an additional qualification for a developer that needs to be mastered independently. 

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  • At the tutor. While this is not the most popular way to learn a new specialty, especially among working adults. However, there is nothing wrong with contacting a private tutor and mastering the basics of the profession you need. 

Top Books and Learning Tools


It is very difficult to talk about books, because it all depends on what, in what language and for which platform you are going to develop. By searching you can find good collections - for example, on the Skillbox website ( this and other links in the article are not advertising, just good materials ).


And of course, look for courses on YouTube, read comments and get started - this is one of the most accessible and simple sources of training. It can be combined with everyone else.

The future of mobile developer


The profession of a mobile developer is special in everything. So, she has a very low entry threshold and at the same time a huge step from June to Middle. A good mobile developer differs from the usual one in terms of advanced skills, versatile knowledge in areas related to development, etc. Indeed, it often happens that this path takes more than two years of painstaking work. 

The future for mobile developers is still very confident: I doubt that the world will abandon mobile smartphones and tablets in the near future, not to mention the growth of various types of wearable electronics and IoT. Therefore, the development of programmers of this type will look like a step-by-step transition junior - middle - senior - lead. Therefore, it is rather important to choose the industry and company in which this path will be traveled.

Of the guys who are suddenly bored with mobile development, they get good full-stack web developers or even enterprise programmers. In general, there are really no special restrictions in a career.

Myths of the profession


  • Govnokoder mobile developers create bad code, do not optimize applications and generally amateurs. Here we are talking about the same situation as with PHP: the language encircles the mountains of the hat because it is easy to enter and the unfortunate webmasters wrote a lot of bad applications on it. There are really a lot of amateurs and amateurs in mobile development, which spoils the big picture a bit. But it’s definitely not worth distributing the findings to each programmer. 
  • Mobile developers earn little. It all depends on your experience, qualifications and ability to solve the tasks of your company.
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Do not go to mobile development for fashion or fun workdays. This is quite a hard work associated with continuous self-education and the need to make regular updates. Yes, it’s more interesting in mobile development, because one developer is not just dealing with some fragment, but with a large block, module, or even almost the entire application. It is interesting to butt with the stores and get sanctioned when your application is deleted, it is interesting to work with the end user. Choose this specialty only if you are ready for work and professional work. There are enough low-quality mobile applications :) Previous episodes of “Profession ...” → Profession: tester → Profession: backend developer →







Profession: front-end developer
→ Profession: system administrator

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