From Good to Great: Backend Engineering

Hello “👋”

Welcome to another week, another opportunity to become a great DevOps and Backend Engineer

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What Makes a Great Backend Engineer?

When thinking about what makes a great backend engineer, it's important to look beyond traditional titles like Senior, Junior, or Staff Engineer. These labels don't truly capture what it means to excel in backend engineering.

Expanding your knowledge into areas like DevOps, Platform Engineering, Frontend, or Mobile development can be helpful. However, having these skills doesn't alone make you a great backend engineer. They are beneficial but not the core of what greatness in this field means.

Who is a Great Backend Engineer?

A great backend engineer is someone who specializes and has a unique perspective on their career in backend development. Different companies might have different criteria for what makes a Senior or Junior engineer, but being great transcends these company-specific levels.

Being a great backend engineer involves focusing on three main principles: being a Team Player, Trustworthiness, and Skillfulness.

Key Qualities of a Great Backend Engineer

Team Player

A great backend engineer makes a positive impact on their team. They contribute actively, listen to their coworkers, respect different ideas, and strive to improve the product or process. Here are a few important characteristics of a good team player:

• Communication: Effectively communicates and listens to others.

• Cooperation: Works well with team members.

• Ownership: Identifies and solves problems proactively.

Trustworthiness

Being trustworthy in backend engineering means being reliable and responsible. A trustworthy backend engineer delivers software that:

1. Works as intended.

2. Works well, following industry standards and best practices.

3. Is maintainable and continues to function over time.

4. Is delivered on time.

Aiming to meet all these criteria consistently is what makes a backend engineer trustworthy.

Skillfulness

A great backend engineer is highly skilled, always learning and improving. This involves not just coding, but understanding the products, customers, and business context of the systems they build. Great backend engineers focus on:

• Continuous practice and learning: Staying updated with the latest tools and technologies.

• Specialization: Mastering a specific area while being adaptable to different projects as needed.

• Understanding concepts before tools: For example, knowing data modeling before choosing a database, or understanding web security basics before using JWT or OAuth.

Becoming a Great Backend Engineer

To become a great backend engineer, practice your skills consistently, stay informed about industry developments, and focus on the principles of being a team player, trustworthy, and skilled. Always be willing to learn and adapt to new challenges.

Technical Skills

Mastering technical skills is essential and requires dedication and continuous practice. Here are some important areas to focus on:

• Data Modeling vs. Databases: Understand data modeling principles before choosing a database.

• Distributed Systems vs. Microservices: Grasp distributed systems concepts before implementing microservices.

• Web Security vs. Tools: Learn web security fundamentals before using specific tools like JWT or OAuth.

• Caching vs. Technologies: Understand caching basics before using technologies like Redis or Memcached.

• Scalability vs. Tools: Study scalability principles before using tools like Kubernetes.

• Monitoring vs. Tools: Know monitoring and observability basics before using tools like CloudWatch.

By focusing on these principles and continuously learning, you can navigate your career toward becoming a great backend engineer. It's this dedication that sets a great engineer apart from a good one.