Software Engineer Job Description [With Examples]

A software engineer analyzes the problem statement and designs a scalable solution using software engineering principles. They are also responsible for data designing, acquiring, maintenance and security, test case designing and documentation.

A software engineer also communicates with all the stakeholders at every step of the software development process and may also double up as the product manager with the right experience.

A software engineering job description should inform the potential candidates about your company and its culture, products they will be working on, their work profile and general expectations. For clarity, you can discuss all this under different headings such as a job brief, responsibilities, skills and qualifications, equal employment opportunities statement, benefits, and company culture.

Job Brief

The aim of a job brief is to give the potential candidates an idea of what they can expect to do when they join the company. It should touch upon:

• What pain points you are trying to solve for your customers
• Projects they will be working on
• Teams they will be part of
• Technologies being used at your organization
• The general work culture and environment

Objectives

In this section you should talk about why you are hiring a software engineer:

• Is this a new position?
• Are you scaling up your software and hence expanding the existing teams?
• Are you building new software?
• Is your organization adopting new technology?

Responsibilities

A software engineer is responsible for designing, building and shipping software. Right from prototyping and designing functional code to coding and testing, they take ownership of the software until it is handed over to the client (internal or external).

Here are the most common responsibilities for software engineers:

• Applying software engineering principles to analyze and problem-solve, and design a solution
• Developing and executing project plans
• Creating technical specifications
• Designing and developing test cases
• Adopting Agile methodologies to develop software
• Analyzing existing systems to provide recommendations for improvement
• Ensuring proper documentation
• Monitoring system performance and performing predictive maintenance
• Performing system risk and reliability analysis
• Assessing new technologies before adoption and implementation

Skills and Qualifications

Here, list the skills and qualifications applicants must possess to be shortlisted:

• Bachelor’s or higher degree in computer science or related field
• Proficient in Java, C++ and other object-oriented programming languages
• Hands-on experience working with technologies (mention the technologies that you use, such as Hadoop, Pig, Oozie, MapReduce, Spark, Sqoop, Kafka, Flume, etc.)
• Strong DevOps focus
• Experience building and deploying infrastructure with cloud deployment technologies (mention the technologies you use)
• Well versed in designing, debugging and documentation
• Prior experience working with test-driven development and automated testing frameworks
• Experience with Scrum/Agile development methodologies
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Analytical and logical thinking
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Ability to work without supervision

Preferred Qualifications

Use this section to add the “good to have” qualifications. This is especially relevant when you are hiring for entry- or junior-level positions and should not expect highly qualified candidates.

Here are some examples of preferred qualifications for software engineers:

• Worked as technical lead
• Experience building APIs and services using REST, SOAP, JSON, RPC, etc.
• Experience with automation technologies such as Apache Ant, Jenkins and Maven (if you use commercial tools such as Bamboo, Travis CI, etc., mention it here)
• Ability to update and manage GitHub repositories

You may also include other details such as benefits you offer, what to include with an application (e.g., if you want a GitHub portfolio), any conditions to employment, and/or an equal employment opportunity statement for legal reasons. Additionally, mention whether you allow work from home or flextime.

Software engineers are needed in any company that uses software internally or provides software as a product or service. However, the role and responsibilities of software engineers will be vastly different for these two scenarios. Similarly, the required skills of software engineers will also vary according to the company, industry or role.

The software engineer job description will be different for all these cases. Let’s look at real job descriptions to understand how you should write your own customized job description.

Example 1. Software Engineer at The Village Companies

The job description comes straight to the point by stating company objectives. It makes it easier for job seekers to decide whether to apply or not by talking about the type of team they would be working with and also describing the person who would fit the role the best.

Although the job has been posted on Dice, the description gives links to other places the candidates can apply. This ensures it does not miss out on suitable candidates just because they find it difficult to apply for the job on Dice.

Example 2. Junior Software Engineer at Maxar Technologies

This job posting is for an entry-level position and hence written a bit differently. The basic qualifications and preferred qualifications are given separately. The potential candidates reading this will be left with no doubt as to the qualifications they absolutely must have to apply. This helps eliminate candidates and it lessens your workload when sifting through the résumés.

Example 3. Senior Software Engineer, Open Source at Postman

The heading of the job description makes it clear that they are looking for senior software engineers who have experience with open source technologies. In the description, the responsibilities with emphasis on the tools and technologies they must be proficient in are clearly outlined. Being so clear about the requirements ensures the right candidates apply to the post and you are able to hire a competent engineer.