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Software engineers are the architects of digital infrastructure, creating and maintaining systems to meet and exceed user needs and industry standards. They integrate innovation with functionality, crafting robust solutions for many technological challenges.
Being a great software engineer goes beyond just writing clean code. It involves analytical thinking, problem-solving, continuous learning, and adapting to new technologies and methodologies.
Keep reading to explore a successful software engineer’s essential skills and daily responsibilities. Plus, read about our career journeys in joining the KORTX software team.
⚡ Insights into software engineer careers ⚡
Source: Zippia.com
Zippia, a career guidance website, ranked the top skills for software engineers based on how often specific skills appeared on resumes. Below is a list of the skills Zippia recommends, along with what we believe to be the best skills a software engineer needs to have.
All potential software engineers must learn a programming language.
Java is the most common language, with 14.8% of software engineers listing it on their resumes. Python is a close second, appearing on 8.6% of resumes.
Choosing a language depends on the type of software engineering you want to pursue.
Once you know a programming language, you can use your skill set in many ways, including:
💡 Our Pro-Tip: Find what interests you the most about software engineering and learn the languages and tools relevant to that area. Whether it’s creating interactive websites, developing mobile applications, analyzing data, or building game engines, focusing on what you enjoy will make the learning process more engaging and help you develop a specialized skill set that can set you apart in the job market.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is an international standard developers use to stay consistent, maintain quality, and deliver high-quality software on time.
In day-to-day operations, engineers use the SDLC in various ways for:
⚡ Tip: Although following the SDLC helps with consistency and quality, be open to project changes, team dynamics, and evolving technologies. Always tailor the SDLC to fit your project’s needs.
Engineering isn’t a solitary career; it requires collaboration, understanding, and sharing complex ideas in simpler terms across teams.
Here are the reasons why communication and interpersonal skills are vital for engineers:
While technical skills are important to becoming an engineer, communication and interpersonal skills connect every part of the project, team, and broader professional community.
💡 Our Pro-Tip: Engage in active listening. Active listening involves fully concentrating, understanding, responding, and remembering what is being said. This helps build a rapport with your team members, creating a more harmonious and productive workplace.
What is your biggest tip for becoming a software engineer?
“My biggest tip for anyone entering the field is to embrace a mindset of continuous learning. The tech landscape is dynamic and always evolving. It is important to stay curious, ask questions, be eager to learn, and welcome new challenges.”
Engineers must have the confidence and drive to learn and tackle problems constantly.
Intellectual boldness means embracing challenges with a proactive mindset, seeking out new knowledge, and being prepared to pivot or innovate when traditional methods don’t suffice.
💡 Our Pro-Tip: Cultivate a “beginner’s mindset.” Approach each problem with the openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions that a beginner would, even when you’re an expert.
Resources to learn intellectual boldness:
What makes for a great software engineer?
“I’d recommend 2 skills: build software. Make a website, write a script to automate a task, buy a server and host your own cloud storage. Taking classes, reading or watching videos is helpful, but I believe hands-on experience is the best way to learn and grow as a software engineer.
The next most important attributes are accountability and curiosity to learn and master software and technology independently. Most jobs won’t have the structure or time to force software engineers to learn everything they need to know.”
Software engineers engage in a variety of tasks every day:
📚 Related article: Read more about the daily operations of a KORTX engineer in How Our Engineering Team Balanced Daily Operations While Launching a New Product.
There’s no single path to becoming a software engineer. We all started as entry-level software engineers and worked up the ranks at various companies in different industries.
Let’s look at how we became software engineers
I distinctly remember the moment I fell in love with computers. I was eight when my dad brought home a computer from England called the Spectrum. He had done a bit of programming and wrote this program that put some dots on the screen in a circle. It hit me like a ton of bricks as sheer magic. That was some indeterminate number of decades ago.
I wanted to be a biologist for a while, but eventually, we moved on to bigger computers, and programming books magically appeared at home. I picked them up and read them obsessively and found a lot of stuff.
The first language that I learned was BASIC. It’s what came with the computer. There was this hint that you could also use machine language to do programming, and I did a bit of that. It was really a primitive machine, and I didn’t have a group of people who could teach me how to do that, so I kind of learned the basics of it but quickly moved on.
The programming book that appeared at home was the C programming language, which I consider the most important programming language ever. I then went to college for Computer Science at Michigan Tech, which meant going from sunny places to 12 years a month of snow and 10 months of winter. It was an adjustment.
I started as someone fascinated by computers, driven by the magic I saw as a child, and continued to pursue this fascination, leading me to become a software engineer. It’s been a lifelong fascination, not an obsession because that sounds like stalking and murder would be involved, but more of a deep and enduring interest.
I think I was a little older than Javier when I fell in love with computers and programming, but it was around middle school for me. My first experience with programming, which I didn’t know then, was with a video game called Warcraft III. It had a world edit custom map maker where you could make your own maps and do some custom scripting. I was awful at it. I’ve seen the code I wrote before, and it’s terrible. But I took a stab at different maps and stuff, which set me down the journey.
Later in high school, I had a statistics class I could have done better in because I was too busy wanting to program different programs on my TI-84. So, I was too busy with that instead of actual statistics.
From there, in my junior and senior high school years, I took an extra class where I learned a little bit of JavaScript. From there, I went on to take courses at Simpson College and fell into computer science as a whole.
I started off as an Industrial Engineering Intern at Rockwell Collins, working my way up to Software Engineer II at Principal Financial Group, and now at KORTX as a Senior Software Engineer.
Software engineering is filled with continuous learning and problem-solving. Stay passionate, curious, and engaged with the community around you.
What makes for a great software engineer?
“I think 3 things are essential to any software engineers working in a team:
1) a solid understanding of the fundamentals and solving tricky problems creatively, 2) the ability to communicate and collaborate within a team, and 3) a keen attention to little details. These are the secret weapons of any software engineer when developing a successful product.”
Whether you’re inspired by creating magical experiences like Javier with his first computer or drawn to programming challenges like Nathan, there are many paths to becoming a successful software engineer.
Embrace the journey with an open mind, engage deeply with the community, and persist through the challenges.
Remember, every line of code written and every problem solved adds a verse to your career’s story.
Keep pushing the boundaries, and let your passion for technology drive you towards an exciting and fulfilling future in engineering.
As a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company, we’re proud of our positive work culture that promotes collaboration, innovation, and growth for our team members.
If you’re interested in joining our team but need an opening that matches your interests and experience, apply to our Talent Pool today.
Javier Fernandez is a code monkey Principal Software Engineer at KORTX. He otherwise hoards tools and hobbies, especially if they require books (the hobbies, not the tools).
Nathan Hawkins is a Software Engineer at KORTX.
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