Skills required in 2021/2022 to secure a Java Developer job

I regularly interview developers, and wanted to share some tips on what is required to get a job. Juniors sometimes learn the wrong technology, seniors sometimes stuck in legacy tools or thinking.

Selecting the right specialization

I often get the question of what should I learn to get an IT job. The answer is that it depends on… Back in the good old days a talented “IT Guy” did everything from hardware installation to website development. These days an enterprise IT project is so complicated that it requires specialists like :

• Backend developer (.Net, Java, Python, etc)
• Frontend developer (Angular, React, Vue, etc)
• Architect
• Mobile developer
• Data engineer, Big data engineer
• Data scientist
• UX designer
• Scrum master
• Project manger
• Tester (manual, automation engineer)
• SEO
• System administrator
• White hat hacker
• and many more

Selecting the right specialization is hard, but knowing what to learn is even harder, because technologies change quickly, a 2–3 years old book or university course can be easily outdated.

The demand on the job market (and the salary) can vary significantly, but there are a few general rules : Almost every company that builds software will need backend and frontend engineers. Amongst backend engineers Java, .Net, Python and C++ are the most demanded (and highest paid). At the time of writing this article there were 4700 Backend Java developer openings in London , 1500 Backend .Net developers and 3700 Frontend React developers. It is a never ending debate which programming language is the best, but we can certainly say that investing into a Java Backend Developer career path is amongst the safest and highest paid options.

Required skills for a Java developer

There isn’t a definite list, but learning the most popular tools of the most common categories are likely a good investment. There might be better or trendier alternatives, but these are the most likely to be used in real world companies therefore the most likely to be appreciated in a job interview.

0. Tooling

• IntelliJ Idea Community edition as a development tool (IDE), see tutorial.
• Maven as a build tool, see tutorial.

1. Java 8+

There are countless free and paid tutorials, here are a few examples

• https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html
• https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/index.html
• https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/TOC.html
• https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=java

2. Java 9–17+

Chances are that the java course you find will teach an older version. The last major change in Java was Java 8 . If you mastered that then new features are easy to learn.

3. Unit and integration testing

Developers don’t just write production code, they also write unit tests to avoid regression. JUnit is the most common unit testing framework, see tutorial.

5. Spring boot

Spring boot provides a lot of simplification how we run enterprise grade java applications. There are very few companies who run Java without Spring and Spring Boot.

• Spring core, Dependency injection, java config. See tutorial
• Database access : JDBC, JPA. See tutorial
• Creating APIs to serve UI : Spring MVC Rest. See theory and practice.

Skills that every developer should know

The below tools and technologies apply to every developer specialization may it be frontend of backend.

Version control system

Version control systems allows multiple developers to collaborate on the same project. Nowadays the de-facto standard is Git, see tutorial.

Design patterns, Test Driven development, Agile

Design patterns are programming language independent best practices that every developer should know. They are very frequent job interview questions. The most respected book is Clean Code it also worth reading it’s sequel, the Clean Coder

Engineering teams almost always organize their work according to Scum or Kanban principles. This short free e-book explains how it works.

Attitude and personality

The programmer stereotype is the introvert nerd. This certainly exists, but in reality programmers usually work in large teams and they need to be good communicators. Programmers are paid to solve business problems so they need to be open to learn about other professions e.g.: finance, health care etc. They should be also self managing and eager to learn new things.

Technologies to be avoided

In 2021 it might be a waste of time to learn these technologies

• Java versions prior to Java 8
• JEE, JSP, JSF, Swing

Further learning opportunities

Thanks to the high demand and low supply of skilled Java developers, most companies are focusing on the core skills and allow employees learn the rest on the job. The most common additional skills are

Docker (Tutorial), Kubernetes (Tutorial) . These will be good foundation for Cloud computing that is also in high demand.

Summary

IT is one of the most tolerant, inclusive work environment, may it be nationality, gender, age sexual orientation or years of professional experience. Not because IT companies are better but because they are in such a need.

Learning all the above from zero might take 5–12 month but it can be greatly simplified by attending a boot camp, online training or at least having someone who already knows this and can help on demand.