Updated: May 21, 2023
If you’re making your first steps in IT recruitment, you’ll face an overwhelming amount of new terms which relate to job positions, tools and technologies as well as methods of organizing and supervising the workflows. In this article, we’ll list the five most popular IT terms and try to explain their essence with casual words. This information should help you realize that the technical language is not too difficult and you shouldn’t be afraid of it. Hopefully, this text will inspire any novice recruiter and they will start to regularly expand their IT vocabulary on their own!
Dev-Ops Engineer
The “dev” part of this term stands for “developers” and “ops” for “operational teams”. Testers and system administrators belong to the latter category. The dev-ops engineer coordinates the cooperation of both groups of professionals.
Before the advent of cloud technologies, this role was not necessary. The developers and the operational departments could perfectly work without third-party supervision. By now, their scope of responsibilities has increased dramatically. They need to focus on higher-priority duties while someone else remains in charge of the managerial aspects.
A dev-ops engineer strives to accelerate the work and amp up the productivity of all the parties involved. As soon as a patch of the code is written, it immediately gets implemented.
This job is especially important for organizations that frequently modify the production code of the apps and software that they work on. In some companies, this might happen every few hours.
API
When reading the job description of an IT position, you’ll be likely to come across such a requirement: “Be able to implement an external API in apps”. It might mean, for example, that the IT specialist should know how to add the instant payments feature to Internet shops.
This acronym denotes Application Programming Interface. It’s a complex of conditions and interrelations that lets you integrate third-party components into a digital product. It’s accompanied by detailed documentation so that everyone who has access to these papers becomes able to use the API.
If the code of an app is freely available to the general public, the app belongs to the open-source category. Otherwise, only the people who have signed the contract will get access to the protected code.
Frontend – Backend – Fullstack
When hiring a developer, you should realize whether you need a full-stack, frontend or backend specialist.
The front end is the layer of the digital product that its end-users interact with. It includes the design of the page, its navigation, buttons and forms — everything that you can see and/or click.
The backend is the inner layer that remains invisible to consumers. It’s where all the functions and operations of the digital product take place. This layer is connected to the front end and they operate together.
Full-stack professionals can handle both layers. That’s why their services cost more than those of the employees who specialize in either front end or back end only.
QA (Quality Assurance)
It’s a common term in both web and mobile development. Once a digital product is ready, the QA department begins to test it. If the product fully meets the client’s requirements, it's passed to the customer and hits the market soon. Otherwise, the QA team sends it back to the developers. The latter fine-tune it and transfer it to the testing staff once again.
QA specialists check the quality of both the front end and the back end. They can do so manually or with the help of automation tools. The former approach suggests that the testers should mimic the end-user behavior. In the case of automation, the QA professionals write the testing code for the app with the help of the same programming language that was used to build this app.
Some organizations lack QA departments because they:
- Can’t afford the required expenses;
- Deal with relatively small projects;
- Stick to a development methodology that doesn’t involve such a department
In this case, the developers are responsible for reviewing the code that they have created. Very few of them believe it’s an efficient approach.
Java vs JavaScript
Both are widespread programming languages that were created in the 1990s and rely on a similar syntax. Contrary to a stereotype, the latter isn't an advanced version of the former.
Originally, JavaScript was called LiveScript. Java turned out to be more popular and the company that invented LiveScript asked for permission to rebrand its language. They got permission and successfully applied this marketing trick to expand the audience of their product.
Today, it would be unfair to say that JavaScript generates less demand than Java. Both are immensely popular. JavaScript enables developers to create much more than static websites. Its learning curve is shallow and it’s renowned for its versatility.
Final Thoughts
Of course, the list from this article is by no means exhaustive. There are so many other terms in the IT sector that you also need to know: HTML, Agile, sprint, adaptive technology and many more. Keep on expanding your industry knowledge and vocabulary to make the most of your recruitment efforts!
