iOS serves to be a great mobile app development platform for businesses seeking to strengthen their digital presence and drive higher revenue in today’s digital era. It has its own strong and loyal customer base of around 1.5 billion across the globe. At the same time, the future of iOS appears to be brighter than ever before with technological advancements. Hence, having an iOS application has become a need of the hour for every business now.
However, developing a feature-rich, modern, scalable and secure iOS application is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort, time, patience, and technical expertise. By hiring a skilled iOS developer or a development team, you can build highly innovative iOS applications with splendid features and unique functionality that customers expect.
If you are planning to start a new iOS app development project, you need to focus on the most important aspect of building an iOS application. And that is hiring iOS app developers with deep knowledge of iOS programming languages, frameworks, tools, and processes.
In today’s post, I will discuss the important skills to look for when hiring iOS app developers and the best ways to hire iOS professionals for your project. Let us understand the required skills first.
Must-Have Technical Skills of iOS App Developers
The modern-day realm of iOS app development is evolving with advanced technologies and powerful tools used in iOS product development. Apple launches new products, frameworks, and versions every year. Hence, the ideal iOS app developer must have a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals, a proper understanding of the iOS ecosystem, experience, and a passion for learning new things that rise to popularity.
However, every project is unique and has different requirements. You need to be specific with your project scope, functionalities, integrations, performance, security, time frames, so on and so forth. Not to forget, every project has different challenges that are addressable with specific tools or technologies. Below is a list of must-have technical skills which you can expect in every iOS developer:
1 Xcode IDE Experience
Using Xcode, developers can build universal iOS applications for several Apple devices like iOS, tvOS, macOS, and watchOS. Combined with Cocoa Touch frameworks and Cocoa, it helps to deliver unique applications that offer a delightful user experience. Hence, this is one of the primary and most important iOS development skills you must look for in any iOS developer.
2 Language Proficiency – Swift/Objective-C
To develop native iOS apps, businesses need to use either Swift or Objective-C programming language. One should be familiar with any of these programming languages to support some legacy applications. Furthermore, iOS developers must have profound knowledge of functionalities of Swift such as Syntax, classes, switch statements, inheritance, Objective-C Interoperability, and Initialization.
3 Understanding of Apple Human Interface Guidelines
It is best to hire iOS developers with capabilities to contribute to the app’s UI/UX design elements by strictly adhering to Apple’s design guidelines. In order to build highly intuitive iOS applications, a developer must have skills in styling standard UIKit elements, integrating design assets, and creating custom controls to enhance the look and feel of the app. In-depth knowledge of Auto layout is also a must for developers as it allows to create a UI by establishing relationships between various elements.
4 Experience in integrating API and third-party libraries
To speed up the development cycle, it is important to take advantage of third-party libraries. And iOS developers must know about integrating APIs and third-party libraries into specific Xcode projects using the Swift Package Manager or Cocoapods.
5 Sufficient Knowledge of Databases like Core Data or Realm
Application effectiveness relies upon the database as the app operation is related to the overall performance, which includes uploading, storing, searching, loading, and filtering data. Businesses, as well as developers, need to store and safeguard their users’ data with a proper backup. To carry out these operations, developers must have a robust knowledge of databases. Some popular databases like Core Data, Realm, SQLite, etc., help developers store or retrieve data on Apple devices in an object-oriented way. Hence, iOS developers need to sharpen their skills on the most used databases.
6 Proficiency in Grand Central Dispatch
To give users a smooth experience, Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) allows performing many tasks concurrently on Apple devices, such as displaying data on the screen, reading human touch inputs, pulling data from the internet, and many more. And hence, this is a must-have skill for any iOS developer.
7 Source Control and other team tools
Multiple developers write, submit, change or update their code in a single project several times. And developers must be able to manage and store their code. Keeping control of changes in the source code helps developers resolve conflicts that occur during the source integration. This is one of the essential skills in this list. iOS experts must be well acquainted with source control tools such as Git, SVN, Mercurial, etc. that help them to collaborate with other team members and streamline workflows.
8 Spatial Reasoning
One of the main prerequisites of iOS app development is thinking from an end-user perspective and developing applications accordingly. This means a developer must be able to design an intuitive user interface, features, and functionality that users look for. This requires the ability to visualize spatial relationships between objects when designing apps for multiple devices.
9 Non-technical and Soft Skills
Developers have to deal with multiple things simultaneously apart from coding while working with a team of developers and clients. To maximize professional growth and streamline workflow, iOS developers must have soft skills such as communication, teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, dedication, etc.
Besides the above-mentioned skills, iOS developers must have other important technical skills such as knowledge of RESTful APIs and APIs like Cocoa Touch, UIKit and Swift UI, knowledge of storyboards, table views, memory management, and unit testing. To keep with the latest market trends and deliver AR-based immersive digital experiences to users, they must be able to master new tools or skills like AI algorithm integration, ARKit, and Reality Kit.
Now, it’s time to look for different options to find and hire the best iOS developers for your project.
Different Options to Find and Hire iOS Developers
As hybrid work culture has become a new normal, building a strong team of expert developers is the first and most important aspect for businesses. Several hiring options are available in the market, which you can choose based on your project needs. Let us discuss the same.
1 Hire with the help of referrals
This is the best way to hire a reliable developer for your next project. Someone in your group can help you suggest the right choice for your development needs. You can run a referral program in your network, get the best fit and high-quality developers who can stay with you in the long haul.
2 Attend tech events, developer conferences, and meet-ups to hire top talent
Such events are a great way to find and hire exceptional talent for your project. You can attend various tech events like Hackathon, developer conferences, or meet-ups to build connections with industry experts and talented developers. In meet-ups, you can get in touch with all kinds of engineers with specific skill sets. Furthermore, such events help you stay updated with the latest market trends, which you can incorporate into your next project.
3 Use online platforms to hire developers
Whether you want to hire full-time iOS developers or part-time iOS developers on a contract-based basis, online platforms are the best option. You can find the top tech talent from various online platforms such as GitHub, Stackoverflow, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc. You can post your requirements and get applications from interested candidates. Or else, you can search developers with specific skills and experience in a particular location and directly connect with them to get on board.
4 Hire iOS Developers with the help of staffing agencies
If you do not want to get involved in the time-consuming hiring process, you can take advantage of staffing agencies. They assist you in the entire hiring process, from screening, interviewing to getting on board. The chances of employing the perfect fit for your project increase this way.
5 Hire freelancer iOS developers
To complete your project as soon as possible, you can use a variety of freelance platforms available online to find an experienced iOS developer for hire.
6 Hire outsourced developers or a dedicated team of developers
When you have stringent deadlines, lack of talent availability, or budget issues, you can go for this option of outsourcing developers. You can partner with an iOS app development company to extend your existing team with proficient iOS developers. After discussing your project requirements, you can have iOS developers on board and start your new iOS project. At the same time, you can also employ an entire team, including project managers, UI/UX designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, and QA professionals, to accelerate your existing development workflow or begin the work from scratch.
Factors to Consider When Finding and Hiring the Best iOS Developers or Development Team
So far, you have understood the must-have skills and best ways to find experienced iOS developers for hire to complete your project on time. Now, you need to focus on key factors when hiring the best developers for end-to-end project management and on-time delivery. A wrong decision related to hiring can affect your project in the long run and make your development disastrous.
1 Assess project requirements, capabilities and set goals
You need to be clear with your app development requirements, such as features, functionalities, time frames, technologies to be used, etc., to hire best iOS developers with deep domain knowledge and technical expertise. That’s why you must be ready with your project description before starting the recruitment process.
2 Check developers’ expertise, experience, and feedback
A developer’s portfolio can give you an in-depth look at their knowledge, technical expertise, and experience level. Check their previous or most recent projects, responsibilities, analyze their style of work, and other related achievements. Also, pay attention to problems solved in a project, reviews or feedback about the work, etc.
3 Check out the iOS app development methodology used by developers
You should also know the development methodology used by iOS developers, the type of app architecture they are good at developing, their expertise in developing cross platform applications, etc. This helps you analyze professionals’ specialized know-how and pattern of developing applications.
4 Ability to communicate clearly with team members and clients
Developers need to stay in constant touch with cross-functional team members to design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain purpose-driven iOS applications throughout the development lifecycle. At the same time, they have to connect with clients to seek their feedback and make changes in the code, which requires clear and transparent communication skills.
5 Costing
You need to employ iOS app developers who can help you manage and complete your project within a stipulated time frame by making maximum usage of available resources. However, the cost of your project depends on various elements such as the complexity of the app, experience, country, etc. Thus, based on your hiring options, you can calculate the cost of the developer and complete your project within a set limit of your budget.
Conclusion
Hopefully, the above shared information will help you hire skilled iOS developers for your next project while minimizing the development risk and cost. The purpose is to simplify your recruitment process and assist you in hiring experts with specific skill sets. You need to determine the degree of the iOS app development services the developers can provide to complete your project on time. They must possess the skills mentioned above, along with development trends and practices around the iOS platform.
Mobisoft has a team of developers who make sure to deliver custom iOS solutions that match your expectations and provide an immersive experience to end-users. We have more than a decade of extensive experience in developing customer-centric and high-quality iOS applications for a variety of industries. You can hire iOS app developers to accelerate your next iOS app development project and create more qualitative iOS apps. Let us work together to make customer-centric iOS applications.
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.
