We all know that handling client and server-side requirements simultaneously brings a lot of flexibility to any software development project. There are a few technology stacks that can help you achieve this flexibility. The MEAN stack is out of those important ones. It can take care of your full stack development tasks and help you deliver fully functional applications in a hassle-free way. However, to take full advantage and maximize your project outcomes, you need to employ the right MEAN stack developer or a team.
Hiring MEAN stack developers can be tough and challenging. That’s why we have come up with this complete guide to simplify this process and help you choose skilled developers for your project. So without further ado, let’s discuss this in detail.
All About MEAN Stack Developers
MEAN Stack developers are nothing but full stack professionals with experience in JavaScript-based technologies, including MongoDB, Express JS, Angular JS, and Node JS. Also known as JavaScript full stack web developers, they are considered ideal for creating dynamic user interfaces and applications. They are capable enough to incorporate advanced features and functionalities for both the front-end and the back-end. Let us have a brief idea about what MEAN stack developers do.
MEAN Stack Developer Roles and Responsibilities:
- Plan, develop, test, and deploy highly scalable applications, web-based solutions, and other digital products and services.
- Architect and maintain complex relational and non-relational databases.
- Exploit new IDEs, frameworks, SDKs, APIs, and other tools when required.
- Leverage DevOps practices and modern approaches like Agile, Scrum, Lean, XP, etc., for quick pivoting and iterative development.
- Collaborate with different team members, including UI/UX designers, testing & QA professionals, system engineers, etc., to overcome complex business challenges and technical issues.
- Deploy applications on the cloud within stipulated timelines and take the necessary measures to debug all possible hosting-related issues.
- Monitor servers and overall infrastructure to identify and remove potential bugs, glitches, and vulnerabilities from production and non-production environments.
- Work on the front-end and back-end requirements to improve performance and overall application productivity.
- Prioritize mobile responsive design patterns to incorporate user-friendly features.
- Track and manage users as well as business-critical data and information.
- Write clean code and validate it accordingly to support system architecture.
- Ideate, formulate, and introduce out-of-the-box IT solutions for business growth and enhancement.
Key Benefits of Employing a Right MEAN Stack Developer
Now that you know how these professionals contribute to your project, it’s time to check out some of the most important benefits that you get by employing a developer or building your own MEAN stack development team.
Strong Development Community
When you hire MEAN specialists, you get the privilege to align with a robust development community that helps them understand multiple users’ queries alongside offering innovative solutions to meet those with ease.
Cut Overhead Costs
You don’t need to hire two separate developers or teams for your front-end and back-end requirements. This helps you avoid additional costs related to infrastructure, resources, and other essential equipment.
Enhanced Security
Hiring a MEAN development team helps you implement industry-acclaimed standards and the best security practices to protect your application against various data threats, cyberattacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, phishing issues, and more.
Easy Server Deployment
Another significant benefit of considering dedicated MEAN stack developers for hire is effortless server deployment. They help you deploy web and mobile applications right on the server without raising any complexities.
Better SEO
They help you exploit JSON to its best and accelerate your search engine optimization operations. They bring in more organic traffic by making your structured content easily accessible, readable, and understandable.
Improve Loading Times
MEAN programmers are known to promote faster loading times. They enable your system to integrate isomorphic code for your browser and server, which ultimately makes your application highly responsive and active to user requests.
Skills to Look for While Appointing MEAN Stack Developers
All the aforementioned benefits will come your way only when you hire the right developers or a team for your project. And for that, you need to strictly consider the MEAN stack developer skills given below before making a pick.
In-depth Understanding of MEAN Technologies
Your chosen developers should have an in-depth understanding of MEAN technologies. They should have experience in MongoDB and NoSQL, along with functionalities like data replication, data modeling, ingestion, sharding, query, and more. The developers must have the potential to use Express JS for creating dynamic web apps. They should have good command over Angular and its relation with key aspects like TypeScript, SPA, Dependency injection, Pipes, Bootstrap Grid System, and testing. Besides, knowledge of Node JS and Node JS multi-processing along with REST, Socket.io, CRUD, Grunt, and Gulp is also necessary to achieve desired results.
Familiarity with Web Technologies
You should employ a MEAN full stack developer or a team that is well versed with popular web development technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. They should know the basics of structuring web content with HTML5. Their experience should outline the use of CSS for adding text, color, layout, and more and controlling the web page’s appearance. They should have hands-on expertise in using JavaScript to integrate user-friendly animations and features. Also, knowledge of other web programming languages, such as Java, AJAX, PHP, Perl, Symphony, Ruby, etc., is a must.
Acquaintance with Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
Object-oriented Programming plays a vital role in achieving full stack development with MEAN. Hence, you need to recruit and appoint MEAN experts who are well equipped with all the basic and advanced OOP concepts and pillars, such as modularity, encapsulation, polymorphism, abstraction, and troubleshooting. They should know how to reuse code through inheritance. Moreover, a proper understanding of the method and method passing is also beneficial to make the most out of your project.
API Design and Development
You should employ MEAN app developers after validating their API design skills. Ensure that they are capable enough to build powerful APIs. They should have experience delivering RESTful API services via Express JS and Node JS. Knowledge of binding UI elements to JavaScript object modules plays a vital role in augmenting API development. They should also have a good understanding of UI/UX design, prototypes, and mockups.
Familiarity with Version Control Tools
You need to identify and choose candidates who have seasoned experience in common version control tools and software like GitHub and Git. This is because Git helps you track user activities and manage project files effortlessly. Whereas GitHub facilitates source control functionalities via Git.
Understanding of Database Management System
The usage of databases may vary from one project to another. Hence, a MEAN stack developer should be well acquainted with commonly used database management systems such as MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Familiarity with these systems is necessary for writing queries that can fetch information from available databases and tables related to your project. It also helps in storing and managing data in a better manner.
Proficiency in Web Hosting Platforms
One of the major MEAN stack development skills that your developers should possess is proficiency in hosting applications on various web-based infrastructures. You should always approach candidates that have a good understanding of multiple cloud-enabled hosting platforms, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.
Familiarity with Node Package Manager (NPM)
The Node package manager is more than necessary to build applications in JavaScript. As such, you need to make sure that the MEAN stack web app developers you choose are familiar with NPM and how it is used for package distribution during the app development process.
Experience in using Adjacent Tools
Employ MEAN stack developers who have the ability to handle software development tools like Visual Studio (VS) code and its core functionalities such as syntax highlighting, smart code completion, and built-in debugging. They should know how to exploit Syntactically Awesome Stylesheet (Sass) and Leaner Style Sheet (LESS) and use features that don’t exist in CSS. Their expertise should include designing and customizing MEAN stack applications via Bootstrap. Apart from all this, web servers, Nginx, and Ubuntu are also needed to integrate code into a central repository via continuous integration (CI) tools like Jenkins.
Tips for Finding and Employing the Best MEAN Stack Developers for Your Project
In this section, we will be discussing some practical tips to hire MEAN stack application developers of your choice, who will perfectly meet your project requirements and take your business to the next level.
Define Your Project Requirements
One of the most important tips to follow when hiring MEAN experts is to clearly define your project requirements and end goals. You should have a brief idea about the key aspects, including project scope and size, app type to build, preferred platforms (OSs and devices), advanced features and functionalities to add (if any), skills required, tech stack to use, third-party integrations, budget, and set timeframe to accomplish all the milestones. Ensure that all these aspects are realistic and easily scalable.
Identify Potential Hiring Resources
You can employ freelance MEAN professionals from various online portals like Freelancer, Upwork, Toptal, etc., or build an in-house development team via job boards such as LinkedIn, Monster, Careerbuilder, and so on. But the most competent way to hire potential candidates is by outsourcing your project requirements. This is because freelancers may prove unreliable during complex project handling, and hiring in-house employees will give you access to a limited number of resources. On the flip side, partnering with a MEAN stack development company can help you overcome these challenges in the best way possible.
Here are some partner benefits to look forward to –
- Get end-to-end support to manage your small or large-scale projects.
- Complete transparency to monitor and check project progress with a daily/ weekly reporting mechanism.
- Access to comprehensive MEAN stack consulting services and tech expertise at any development stage.
- Privilege to choose experts of your choice from a global talent pool.
- Exposure to the latest frameworks, IDEs, APIs, programming languages, and other tools.
- Industry-acclaimed practices to ensure confidentiality and security of your code.
- Change your team size anytime with flexible hiring and pricing models.
- Align with the best testing and QA practices to ensure error-free development.
Go through their Project Portfolio
Ask the developers to share the list of the clients they have worked with in the past. Check out their work portfolio to understand the type of projects handled and industries served. Go through their work samples and gain knowledge about their completed and ongoing projects. Identify whether they have handled any similar projects like yours.
Check out Project Management Skills
Another significant tip for choosing the best candidates is to understand their project management skills thoroughly. Check whether they have the ability to handle multiple tasks and complete them within set timeframes. Identify project management tools they prefer and their flexibility to adapt to your tools. Gain knowledge about the approach they follow to complete time-intensive tasks. Find out whether they focus on micromanaged staging or development optimization. Moreover, outline the measures they take to combat failures and turbulent circumstances.
Verify Industry Reputation
Figure out what kind of reputation they have in the market. Do a precise background analysis of how they started their MEAN stack app development journey and what is their current market presence. Ask your professional circle if they have worked with them in the past and how their experience was. Check out client feedback, testimonials, reviews, and ratings for their deliveries on various online platforms.
Ask the Right Questions and Take a Coding Test
It is really important to ask the right set of MEAN stack interview questions to analyze their knowledge about basic and advanced concepts. Make a questionnaire based on your project requirements, pressing coding issues, and technology prerequisites, and watch out for logical reasoning. You can also conduct an online coding test to understand their coding approach, how they utilize resources, and manage time.
Assess their Approach to Tech Advancements
This is one of the most considerable tips to employ a MEAN stack developer of your choice. You need to understand the steps and best practices they use to keep up with the latest technology advancements. Find out their approach toward innovation. Understand their willingness to adopt new tools and technologies.
Evaluate the Way they Communicate
Last but not least, you need to examine the communication approach of the developers and check whether they are open to feedback and constructive criticism. Make sure you pay attention to how they convey their ideas and opinions about a particular topic.
How can Mobisoft Help?
Partnering with Mobisoft will help you hire dedicated MEAN developers and start your project right away. With more than 13 years of experience in the software development landscape, we help you deliver contemporary applications and solutions that your users would love to interact with. We are driven by talented developers, software engineers, app architects, and consultants who are committed to extending MEAN stack development services to those looking to capitalize on potential business opportunities and niche projects. You can also choose our team augmentation services model to extend your in-house MEAN app development capabilities and satisfy your project requirements with ease.
With an even mix of technical expertise and strong industry background, we focus on catering to the requirements of diverse business sectors and helping them stand out. Our experts aim to generate smart mobility experiences without compromising on quality. From custom development and maintenance to UI/UX design, migration, and upgradation of applications, we offer nothing but the best. Altogether, we help you adopt the latest tech advancements and create a lasting impact on your end-users.
The Final Words
Choosing the MEAN technology stack will not only help you transform your ideation into value-driven applications but also give you the needed push to accelerate your digital transformation journey. Many startups, SMBs, and legacy enterprises are already using this stack to optimize their workflows and achieve key business objectives. You can also hire a MEAN Stack developer or a team to launch world-class solutions and generate profitable outcomes in the long run. Just make sure you align with the right software development company that can help you meet evolving demands.
Author's Bio:
Pritam Barhate, with an experience of 14+ years in technology, heads Technology Innovation at Mobisoft Infotech. He has a rich experience in design and development. He has been a consultant for a variety of industries and startups. At Mobisoft Infotech, he primarily focuses on technology resources and develops the most advanced solutions.