Writing the Perfect iOS Developer Job Description

Providing access to a global user base and creating high-quality applications to reflect your services, iOS application developers are expert engineers capable of bringing your organization to the marketplace. The key to hiring these developers into your firm is in creating the perfect iOS developer job description that truly reflects your company and its values as much as it does the developer you plan to hire.

A well-crafted job description is an advertisement that markets your firm. Done well, it should indicate the direction you plan to take your teams and the skills and abilities that will matter most to getting there. In many cases, the right job description is the difference between sought-after engineers applying to your organization or passing up the opportunity in favor of another.

While learning to hire technology experts is rarely easy, it’s something that can be picked up much like a new tool or language. A little advanced research, a few tips and tricks to get started, and a little expert guidance with some help from our resources can see you well on the way to hiring success.

Why Choose iOS App Development

The iOS app store is a clear leader in generating revenues in the mobile app marketplace. Despite hosting fewer users worldwide than its nearest competitor, Android, spending on iOS apps outpaces Google’s store by almost two-to-one.

Additionally, as a store that requires extra steps and approval for developers to reach, it’s a space that’s well-trusted by users and highly valued amongst developers. It’s this focus on capable, reliable, and quality software that makes the iOS marketplace one where companies can create software that truly reflects their business.

Conversely, the strict requirements of the app store also ask more from its developers than most application marketplaces. The iOS store relies on experienced, knowledgeable, and expert developers to build apps that will meet and exceed the expectations of the approval process.

In today’s teams, expert developers are exceeding the expectations of users and the companies that employ them too.

The right iOS developers to bring into your organization should have vast experience creating and publishing apps on this marketplace. You should expect today’s technical staff to be up to date with the latest requirements, trends, and technologies when it comes to publishing quality mobile applications.

To help hire mobile app developers into your teams, we’ve prepared a guide to the best practices in finding and hiring talented developers with ease.

What to Look for in an iOS App Developer

Knowing what to do and, more importantly, what not to do when deploying apps is merely the first thing to look for in an iOS app developer. A developer with a wealth of expertise should be capable of mentoring others too, bringing added value and better direction to a team with diverse skillsets and levels of experience.

Hiring in technical roles is about more than just technical skills. A good hiring decision will find engineers and staff that make the right fit in terms of working culture, attitude, and approach that makes an app development team perform greater than just the sum of its engineers.

Getting the interview phase right is far from easy. We’ve prepared a comprehensive guide on how to interview a mobile app developer that will help you structure an informative interview process to make the best possible decision going forward.

When writing your iOS developer job description, you should reflect the qualities and values of your firm as much as the qualities of the developers you intend to hire. Think about the technologies, projects, or practices that make your firm stand out as an interesting place to invest time and talent.

Consider too whether you want an experienced iOS application engineer capable of taking ownership of the project and mentoring a team, or a developer who can learn a lot from others and take ownership of their work and output.

The single best insight you can get into what an iOS developer can build for you is to get a close look at what they’ve built in the past. Whether that’s personal projects built out of interest and curiosity or commercial projects build professionally—the portfolio of an app developer is a key insight into what they can produce and what choices of style and design they are likely to draw from.

The broader, more interesting, and more complex the portfolio of an app developer the better insight you can gain into their technical abilities and skills. Asking for a portfolio of apps within your iOS developer job description can help applicants to prepare and collect relevant material ahead of time.

It can help to familiarize yourself with the relevant tools and technologies of iOS app development today. Our guide to modern mobile app frameworks can be an invaluable resource in getting you up to speed with the development tools having the biggest impact on the marketplace today.

Some of the specific technologies, methodologies, and tools you should expect your next iOS app developer to know include:

• Experience with iOS-specific languages, frameworks, and tools such as Objective-C, Swift, Core Data, and Cocoa Touch
• Familiarity with Apple guidelines for app design and interfaces
• Experience with agile development methodologies such as SCRUM or Kanban
• Familiarity with RESTful APIs to provide back-end services
• Experience using project management tools such as Jira, Asana, Redmine, or similar
• Experience using continuous integration tools such as Jenkins, TeamCity, or similar

How to Find iOS App Developers

Mobile apps are now the dominant method of interaction between online services and their users. In practical terms, this means app developers are in exceptionally high demand across all industries today. Experience and expertise amongst the group are at a particularly high premium.

Of course, your own experience and knowledge of the tech industry and related businesses can count for a lot when finding and hiring iOS developers. Your network of contacts is the first place to look when tracking down engineers to bring into your firm.

Finding developers through the people you know and the industry contacts you’ve made in the past can very often be the best resource you’ll get. Providing references, examples, and testimonials in addition to initial introductions—leaning on your closest resources first is a reliably intelligent move.

Only when your network has already been investigated or exhausted should you begin to look elsewhere. Online job boards and technical resources are places engineers often look first when investigating who is hiring today. Stack Exchange, indeed, and Glassdoor are all great options to advertise a job spec to recruit candidates for the role.

Whether you’re leaning on contacts within your network, posting the role online, or finding candidates through other avenues—the critical factor in your early recruiting process is going to be the quality and detail of the job description you post.

Done well, the iOS developer job description should convey the technical details of the role, the kind of developer the organization expects, and the kind of environment a prospective candidate would be entering into.

To help you recruit candidates successfully, we’ve put together an iOS developer job description template you can use to boost your recruitment efforts. Simply tailor or template with some of the technical, non-technical, and unique or interesting details about your firm and post far and wide to find hiring success.

iOS Developer Job Description Template

About Us

Tell the story of your organization. Briefly mention the most relevant and most interesting points about where the company came from and where it’s going next. Describe the culture and environment. Talk about the benefits of working there and any perks of the job. Think of this section as a chance to stand out from the crowd and make potential candidates want to join.

Example:

[COMPANY] is a unique smartphone-based car-hire service founded in 2018 to change the industry for the better. Our company is founded on creating automated technologies that can deliver services to users instantly, reliably, and are available 24/7.

Working with cutting-edge automation technologies, our engineers are globally distributed, work across multiple time zones, and contribute to one of the most exciting code bases to come along in a very long time. We are currently hiring a senior iOS developer to build mobile apps that will bring our services to users around the world.

About The Role

Describe the role you are hiring for in plain English. Try and provide insight into what the day-to-day might be like and the kind of developer you are looking to hire for the role.

Example:

We are looking to find a senior iOS developer capable of taking ownership of the project, developing the application to a very high standard, and mentoring junior developers to create a cohesive team. The ideal candidate will have experience integrating back-end services into a fully-featured and robust mobile application in a fast-moving environment.

You will be collaborating with developers, designers, and test engineers at every level to create a capable product targeting iPhone devices. Leadership, problem-solving, and full-stack development experience will be considered essential attributes for the right candidate to succeed.

Responsibilities

• Lean on Swift and Objective-C code to implement features in iOS development
• Collaborate with design teams to create new features to enhance the application’s offerings
• Deploy and manage the iOS application on the marketplace
• Maintain code quality to the highest possible standards, identifying potential issues
• Identify design issues and potential performance bottlenecks, and correct the codebase
• Stay up to date on platform and regulatory issues that could impact the app
• Writing unit tests for the app to ensure the app stays robust and reliable

Skills

• Proficient with C, Objective-C, and/or Swift
• Rich portfolio of applications to demonstrate previous experience
• Experience with third-party libraries and APIs in mobile app development
• Complete understanding of the iOS app development life cycle
• Experience using iOS frameworks such as Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Animation, and Core Text
• Familiar with cloud message APIs and push notifications
• Proficient with version control tools such as Git and SVN
• Knowledge of RESTful APIs and experience connecting with back-end services

Location

Include office location(s), remote options, and the corresponding time zones.

To Apply

Please send a CV and covering letter which highlights relevant experience and why you’d be a good fit for the role to: [[email protected]]

FAQs:

Q1. What are the responsibilities of an iOS developer?

An iOS developer would be broadly expected to contribute Objective-C or Swift code, maintain existing code, and ensure the team’s app is continuously functional and up-to-date. The core responsibilities of an iOS developer will include:

• Writing clean and efficient code to the application’s specification
• Integrating third-party libraries and APIs into the mobile application
• working with designers and architects to create a capable and performant application
• Troubleshooting issues in the code, design, or application to identify bugs and their solutions
• Collaborate with design teams to create new features
• Writing unit tests to ensure code reliability and performance through every stage of development
• Maintain legacy code to ensure the app is consistently working to a high standard
• Identify performance bottlenecks and provide solutions to avoid them in the future
• Participate in code reviews and analysis to ensure high-quality standards are maintained
• Create applications that have been verified as ready to deploy to the marketplace

Q2. What skills do iOS developers need?

An iOS developer needs extensive skills in Apple-specific technologies and the Apple ecosystem. Most often, this includes designing, developing, and deploying apps in a professional or personal capacity to the app store marketplace.

A proficient iOS developer will have some knowledge and experience in either Objective-C, Swift, or both. Experience using iOS frameworks such as Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Animation, and Core Text is often essential as is knowledge of iOS development tools such as Xcode and Cocoa Touch.

It can also be very useful to have experience in using RESTful APIs to connect to back-end services and knowledge of third-party libraries that can be readily deployed for applications. Experience using performance tuning tools, testing suites, and continuous integration packages can be a significant bonus—as can app-specific technologies such as push notifications and cloud messaging capabilities that can go into a rich and fully-featured portfolio of applications to impress employers and schools.

Q3. Is an iOS developer a good career?

With demand and salaries growing year-on-year since the launch of the iOS app store a decade ago, iOS development is an excellent career with a lot of opportunities to get into. The salary potential alone makes iOS development a lucrative career path. Last year, iOS developers in the United States commanded a $120,000 median salary according to recent surveys.

Outside of the monetary component, iOS development offers work that is interesting and creatively challenging, allowing you to enter a wide array of industries and projects with relative ease. Mobile apps have steadily grown to be the number one way that users prefer to interact with online services today.

The result of this continued growth in mobile apps is that demand for developers is still growing even over a decade after the iOS platform was first released. These factors combined make pursuing a career as an iOS developer an excellent choice — and one that will have a lot of options and high demand for many, many years to come.