Skills You Need to be a Great Software Engineer (Besides Coding)

If you are a software engineer or if you want to become one, you probably know that there are a lot of skills that come into play here. A successful software engineer needs a comprehensive skillset, composed of hard, specialized skills directly tied to their role in a dev team.

This is essential for successful product development and rollout, but also for your marketability as a software engineer in a highly competitive job market. Some of the hard skills include:

• Programing languages and coding
• UX software development and testing
• Object-oriented design
• Testing and debugging

And then there are the complementary skills that not many software engineers think about. These are the skills that will put you at the top of the talent pool, make your work job a lot easier, and make you a better software engineer overall.

There are many reasons why you should acquire the following complementary skills, so let’s get right into it.

Learn teamwork when you don’t want to

We don’t want to make any general assumptions, of course, but it’s safe to say that software engineers and programmers like to work alone whenever they can. It should come as no surprise that back-end and front-end development is a job that requires a lot of hours spent in front of the computer/ This doesn’t leave a lot of time or willpower for meetings.

Nonetheless, teamwork is an essential skill that every software engineer needs to master. At least if your goal is to work in a growing dev team or in a corporate setting. Working as a part of a team is easier now that people are working remotely and have a dedicated software developer collaboration tool they can use to track progress, communicate in real time, and most importantly, avoid time waste.

Use this to your advantage, and learn to become a team player by leveraging all the features your collaboration tool brings to the table. When the time comes to come back to the office, you will have a much easier time adapting to the new dynamic.

Master your soft skills

To become a team player but also to make your life and everyone else’s life easier, you need to acquire and refine your soft skills. What are soft skills? These are the skills you use to communicate effectively, influence people and their decisions, and create positive outcomes.

In essence, these skills will help you get what you want without having to fight for it. Developing soft skills is also important for team management. If you’re aspiring to become a team lead at some point, then mastering team management skills is an important stepping stone in your career.

We’ll focus on leadership a bit later, but for now keep in mind that the soft skills you should master include:

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Problem-solving
• Effective presentation 

Abide by the zero trust policy

In an over-saturated online world, building and selling software products is a dangerous game. You are handling sensitive user information that you cannot afford to get leaked into the public domain, nor can you risk leaving any security loopholes in your software. That’s why you need to subject your software to rigorous testing, yes, but it’s also why you should consider learning and introducing the zero trust policy into your development process.

Simply put, the zero trust architecture is a modern security model that demands every user and device to be properly authenticated and authorized before gaining access. Basically, zero trust is about not trusting anyone or any device without proper validation and authentication first.

This is an important part of developing robust software solutions with minimal cybersecurity risks, especially when handling various API integrations. Make sure to emphasize security in your development process and learn to work closely with security specialists to bring secure software products to the market. 

Specialize in a development niche

There are many types of development processes and development work in the digital world, and it’s important for aspiring software engineers to focus on specialization early on. Why? Because specialization will allow you to become an expert in your field and become a top candidate for highly-specialized dev teams.

It’s also important to remember that coding isn’t for everyone and that you should figure out what kind of development work resonates with your values, passions, and career plans. You might discover that you are more suited for website design rather than web development instead, as you’re not a back-end or a front-end software engineer.

Maybe your calling is to be a DevOps engineer or a security engineer – make sure to learn about different career options and test them out. Spend some time testing different roles and developing products and processes for them to learn what drives you and what fails to light a spark.

This will allow you to specialize and follow a career path you’re truly passionate about. 

Should you develop leadership qualities?

In a nutshell, it’s always a good idea for software engineers to work on their leadership skills. Why? Because training in leadership will set you up for promotions and will allow you to advance your career more quickly. Keep in mind that companies are always looking for talented individuals to take on more responsibilities from within their own ranks, which is your opportunity to climb the corporate ladder.

Becoming a software engineer is an excellent way to future-proof your professional life, but if you have any aspirations to ascend to higher positions, then you need to become a leader. The best way to do this is to start small and manage one colleague, like training and overseeing a new employee.

From there, you can move on to overseeing a small team and communicating directly with operations managers. After a while, you can become a senior software engineer and transition into project management as a department lead.

Communicate better to ensure success

No matter if you’re a natural team player or not, dev teams and corporations nowadays demand a high level of communication between employees and departments to ensure efficiency and progress.

Efficient and effective communication is something that disruptive software teams care about to ensure that the project makes continuous progress while avoiding setbacks. Moreover, keep in mind that effective communication will set clear expectations for everyone involved and ensure transparency and accountability.

To that end, make sure to:

• Communicate everything to key stakeholders.
• Master vertical and horizontal communication in your organization.
• Always follow up and keep all communication in written form.
• Use a project management tool that keeps track of all comments and communication in general.
• Learn how to communicate and present your ideas to colleagues and higher-ups.

Over to you

The road to becoming a software engineer is a long one, but becoming a successful software engineer requires that you enrich your skillset with complementary skills. Acquiring these additional skills will make you a better software engineer, but will also positively impact the entire product development process, the organization, and your team as a whole.