Software Engineer: Key Responsibilities, Qualification, Skills & Salary

Who is a Software Engineer?
Key Job Responsibilities of a Software Engineer
Required Qualification/Education
What makes you qualified for this job?
Top Companies/Organizations Hiring Software Engineer
Software Engineer Salary Statistics

Who is a Software Engineer?

An IT professional who develops, designs, and maintains computer software at a particular company is known as a “ Software Engineer”. They utilize their technical and creative skills to help companies solve new and ongoing problems.

Software engineers usually deal with security specialists, other engineers, clients, and internal stakeholders. A good software engineer possesses technical and interpersonal skills and can communicate effectively with users for the testing and debugging of software.

Key Job Responsibilities of a Software Engineer

Some of the main job responsibilities of a software engineer are the following:

Executes the lifecycle of software development.
Gathers user requirements, defines system functionality, and writes codes in different languages such as Java, C++ Jscript.NET, and so on.
Integrates the different components of software into a fully functional system.
Creates software verification plans and quality assurance procedures.
Writing operational documentation with other technical writers.
Responsible for the maintenance of systems by monitoring and rectifying the defects in software.
Troubleshoots, debug, and update the current systems with the latest features.
Makes sure that project plans comply with the industry standards.
Collaborates with engineers, programmers, and analysts to design systems and collects necessary information on the limitations of projects, capabilities, performance requirements, and interfaces.
Modifies and amends current software to resolve errors and mistakes, simplifies its adaptation to new hardware, and improves the overall performance of the software.
Evaluates the needs of users and software requirements to regulate design feasibility within cost and time limitations.
Validates procedures, and directs the testing of the software system, programming, and documentation.
Administers the work of programming teams, technicians, and technologists.
Train other staff members to use the latest or modified equipment.
Postulates the necessary power supply configurations and requirements.

Required Qualification/Education

Being a software engineer, you need to be able to showcase your engineering skills to be a competitive individual in the industry. With that being said, there are some educational requirements to become an influential software engineer. You need to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, IT, or a related field. We’ve compiled a list of the top courses for software engineering professionals that offer valuable credentials.

To stand out among the rest, a master’s degree along with some years of job experience sparkles up your profile.

Relevant In-demand Certifications:

Getting certified in fields relevant to software engineering displays to the employers that you are a capable and well-rounded IT developer, even when your profile is limited. Before opting for any certification, it is good if you do some research about the certifications that employers tends to seek in a candidate while hiring a software engineer in their firm.

Mentioned below are some of the names of most common and popular certifications in Software engineering:

Recommended Courses:

Software Engineering: Introduction

University of British Columbia via edX
60 Hours of effort required!
Study Type: Self-paced

Java Programming and Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization

Duke University via Coursera
289,503+ already enrolled!
★★★★★ (13,883 Ratings)

IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate

IBM via Coursera
6,264+ already enrolled!
★★★★★ (1,915 Ratings)

What makes you qualified for this job?

We have listed down some of the hard and soft skills required by a software engineer.

Hard Skills:

Excellent knowledge of relational databases, SQL and ORM technologies.
Proficient in software driven tools and able to build software applications.
Understanding of JavaScript, Linux/Unix, Perl, Shell, Ruby, PHP, and Python.
Knowledge of UI frameworks and toolkits.
Capable of leading and delivering complex software systems.
Adept at analyzing complex technical data and information.
Able to analyze business requirements and the impact within current database architecture.

Soft Skills:

Must have basic empathy and critical thinking skills.
Have a calm behavior as it leads to optimal software development at the end of the day.
Time management is another important soft skill when it comes to software development.
Effective communication to ensure that every team member complies with project deadlines, requirements, and expectations.

Top Companies/Organizations Hiring Software Engineers

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Intel Corporation, Apple, IBM Cisco systems, are namely some of the top companies that hires software engineers around the world. But this just isn’t it.

The horizon of software engineers is quite broad. They can also fit into business, banking, educational, healthcare and construction industry.