How to Hire Java Developers: Strategies for Success

Recruiting Java developers is a high-priority challenge facing many of the top tech companies today. As one of the dominant programming languages of the last two decades, demand for developers with experience in java development is as high now as it’s ever been. Strong and robust strategies are key to hiring Java developers with the experience, skills, and tools needed to drive your business forward.

Currently used to support desktop, cloud, and mobile solutions—Java development can play any number of diverse roles within organizations. Yet, while being a boost to productivity, this flexibility can come with challenges and considerations that more narrowly focuses languages such as Ruby are less encumbered with.

A hiring manager may have to field responses from more than a dozen different specialists in a dozen different fields from just a single posting, for example. The high degrees of flexibility the language allows means many developers can have a breadth and depth of experience without necessarily being familiar with any one set of tools or technologies.

It’s these unique challenges that make hiring Java developers a tricky proposition requiring care, due diligence, and lots of consideration. Finding the right fit by combining the soft and hard skills necessary to complete your organization is rarely an easy challenge

These are areas of hiring that we’re more than familiar with at Pangea. Recruiting tech talent across multiple technologies and industries, we’ve come to appreciate the unique profile and makeup of many of the most popular languages in tech—including Java. To make the most of our experience and knowledge, tell us what you need and let us pick out five of the top Java development teams with experience in your field today.

Understanding Java Development

Due to the broad and capable nature of the Java language, experience can come from any number of areas of interest. Understanding these, and the unique skills required to create a functional team, is key to knowing what you require to move your firm forward.

An experienced Java developer, for example, would be expected to have in-depth knowledge and understanding of modern versions of the language and its latest features. They would be expected to bring a high-level understanding of the project architectureand potentially come with specialist skills such as web services, enterprise beans, or Android development experience.

To understand the ecosystem of Java development and the skills necessary to navigate it, our article on the top Java development skills in demand right now takes a look at precisely these challenges. From tracking the latest language releases to practicing the latest skills and knowledge required to remain up to date, knowing the most in-demand skills can keep you ahead of the curve.

For developers with less experience in the language, the knowledge requirements should be slightly less focused and more broadly applied. Hiring managers should instead look for practice in some of the common libraries used for production and testing, API experience, and some degree of familiarity with common frameworks and tools as a reasonable baseline.

Some common technologies developers should be familiar with in Java development include:

• The JVM (Java Virtual Machine) that runs all Java-written code in a virtual environment on any hardware
• JVM Components and subsystems including ClassLoader Subsystem, Runtime Data Area, Execution Engine
• Garbage collection. Used to retrieve unused objects from memory and create space
• Multithreading, parallelization, and thread synchronization. Key performance tools in developing Java

One of the more modern trends of Java development is a shift toward microservice architectures. Consisting of independent modular services, these can be used to deploy major applications in an efficient way that can be easily modified, upgraded, and maintained by developers. Our article on Microservice trends in Java analyses the technologies that are making microservices popular amongst teams and what they will mean for organizations in the future.

Whether deploying microservices, mobile apps, or a cloud platform—it’s the core skills in Java that will define application success. Taking a broader look at these essential skills, and how they impact services, tips to be a better Java developer takes a close look at understanding Java and listing the things necessary to make up your teams.

How to Hire Java Developers

With a complete and thorough understanding of what the language is and the type of developers you need to access it, you next have to consider how you’re going to build the team that will create and deploy your future services.

By identifying the team you want, the technologies they’ll be familiar with, and the role they will play in the company you will save a lot of legwork and discovery in later stages of hiring.

Are you looking for a team to maintain a specific project already in production, or one to design and implement something new from the ground up? Both options require very different development strategies, different areas of expertise, and different kinds of teams to build the right business.

Are you looking for a cloud-based engineer, back-end web developer, native Android developer, or desktop-based application? Each one requires very different skill sets and expertise despite leaning on the same language and some of the same libraries.

While experience in one area can often be translated and used productively to build knowledge in another, the most effective and efficient way to hire is to find the developers with the required skills and knowledge in the first place. This may sound easier said than done, but the reality is that it’s something that can be readily applied with a little advanced knowledge, and awareness of the current trends.

How you hire Java developers will be strictly defined by the kinds of skills and knowledge you are looking to use from the Java ecosystem. Taking a look at these language skills today, and the trends that will impact hiring into the future Java developer hiring trends takes a close look at the most critical aspects of hiring Java teams and the critical things to consider.

How to Find Java Developers

The next stage in the hiring process is finding out where to go to find the high-quality engineering teams that will make the difference in your organization.

Whether you’ve tested the waters already to find Java developers, or heard from teams who have, you might be familiar with the challenges and difficulties the hiring process can bring when applied to Java development. Today’s developer marketplace is one of the most crowded and competitive we can remember when it comes to finding engineers with Java experience.

More than simply posting an ad and waiting for an influx of interest, knowing where to look, what to advertise, and the response to look for is something that takes time, experience, and practice in the realm of technical recruiting.

This is an area where you can rely on our experience and practice in Java hiring. From looking out for the right kind of experience, industry certifications, and past projects to finding out how to advertise your firm as a valuable place to invest talent, our article on hiring Java developers distills our skills and experience in the technical hiring field to take you through the process step-by-step.

Starting with where to go and what to do to find the best engineering talent, we’ve even provided a job description template you can use to secure high-quality Java developers for your organization today.

If you’re looking for more resources on onboarding Java development teams into your organization then take another look at Pangea.ai. Share your requirements with us and we can find the highest performing and best suited Java developers to bring into your team and meet your goals with ease.

Managing Java Developers

Using the guides and resources we’ve included here, you should have everything you need to begin the process of finding and hiring the Java developers you need to build your next project.

While developing these skills is rarely easy, they are critical stepping stones to finding and managing future success.

Getting the most out of a team of Java developers means deploying the right project management strategies, tools, and techniques to ensure their success. While hiring the best development teams from around the woeld is a great start, management is the boost that’s going to accelerate these teams to reach entirely new heights.

High degrees of productivity are just one reason that distributed teams are proving central to the way organizations function today. For your organization, distributed teams should be a key consideration when it comes to hiring and management strategies for the future.

Taking a look at what it’s like to work with distributed Java teams and laying out the tools, processes, and strategies that can make this happen—our article on how to work with remote java developers will guide you through the process. Starting with the initial considerations and early objections and working through to the practical tips and working methods you can use to get your organization to where it needs to be, this is one resource you can’t afford to miss.

There are, however, some things to consider if you or your firm are diving into remote management for the first time, When it comes to development teams, it pays to take extra time and care to get the process right from the start. Many firms have stumbled into blunders and mistakes with mismatched processes, ignoring the primary challenges, and micromanaging when it comes to outsourced teams.

These mistakes are often cited as primary reasons to avoid remote management and distributed teams within organizations. Yet, in practice, we’ve found them to be obstacles that are trivial to avoid in practice—as long as you’re aware of them in the first place.

When it comes to your Java teams, starting on a good grounding with the right research, and the best of intentions is critical to setting up for project success.

Our article on managing Java teams takes you through the key things you should do and exactly what you shouldn’t do when it comes to remote management. The Do’s & Don’ts of Managing an Outsourced Java Development team has everything you need to dive in and get started with making your organization more productive using outsourced Java teams.

Hiring Java Developers

A unique challenge in application development, the immense popularity and productivity of Java has made it a developer’s best friend in implementing applications and services. These same features, however, can also make it a hiring manager’s biggest headache.

Fielding applications from native mobile engineers when you need a cloud systems expert, or vice-versa, can be a frustrating challenge to tackle. Even finding the right engineers to discuss hiring or interview with can feel like an uphill battle, but it’s one easily solved with our resources.

When it comes to hiring, a few key tips and tricks and some essential resources can be enough to alleviate these pains. With a little care, attention, and due diligence you can turn Java development into the best tool you have in your organization’s toolbox.

Q1. How Do I Hire a Java Developer?

You can hire a Java developer by inviting applications from experienced engineers with knowledge of the language and a strong portfolio of apps to show. Finding these candidates means posting a job description that advertises your firm as an interesting and exciting place to work with plenty of opportunities for growth and development. The easiest way to invite these applications is by advertising your organization as a target that high-quality developers should want to aim for.

Candidates should be able to demonstrate clean, readable, and optimized code in creating applications that have a high degree of relevance to your organization and its wider industry. Look for developers with skills and experience in technologies you commonly use today, J2EE, Android, or enterprise Java beans for example. Don’t forget to look for soft skills and experience in areas such as management too—often overlooked by hiring managers these are skills that can prove at least as critical as technical ones when it comes to creating and managing successful teams.

Q2. How Much Do Java Developers Make?

Java developers make just under $52,000 per year, according to the most recent StackOverflow Insights survey. This compares poorly against similar languages such as C++ ($54,000), and C# ($58,000). At the other end of the scale, Ruby developers averaged $80,000 per year while Clojure developers made the highest amount at $95,000.

Conversely, Java was the 7th most widely used language amongst professional developers—ranking higher than C#, C++, and Ruby by a significant margin. Both loved and hated by developers, Java was two places below its next-nearest rival C++ in popularity.

When it comes to demand, Java ranks higher than all of its next nearest competitors as a language that organizations are eager to get their hands on.

Q3. Are Java Developers in High Demand?

Java developers are amongst the most in-demand engineers in the tech industry today. Just behind JavaScript and SQL, Java development skills are widely appreciated thanks to the wide range of roles the language can play within an organization and the flexibility it can offer to teams.

While there is a lot of competition from highly productive languages such as C#, Python, and GO few have been able to challenge Java for the top spot as the most in-demand language in 2021 or 2022.

The abundantly available tools, frameworks, and resources available for Java have kept the language relevant over 25 years of development and various iterations of its structure. Easy to learn, highly versatile, and still amongst the most popular languages today, demand for Java developers doesn’t look to be slowing any time soon. In fact, Java remains one of the most commonly requested languages by hiring managers in the tech industry over previous years.