"It's exciting to feel supported by Trio and do what I love while experiencing new challenges."
Distinguishing itself as a true powerhouse for enterprise-grade applications, Node.js has made a name for itself as a truly fast, cross-platform enabled development environment.
Some of the biggest brands and enterprise customers use Node.js to power their digital businesses, and the overwhelming support doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
What Is Node.js?
Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside of a web browser. Node.js enables developers to use JavaScript to run scripts server-side to produce dynamic web page content.
The great achievement of Node.js is that it unifies web application development around JavaScript, meaning you can build an entire application front to back with only one programming language.
Node.js allows the creation of web servers using JavaScript and various modules that handle different kinds of functionality.
Node.js sets itself apart from PHP and ASP in the following ways:
- It runs single-threaded
- It is non-blocking
- It supports asynchronous programming
- It is memory efficient.
What Can Node.js Do?
- Node.js can generate the dynamic page content
- Node.js can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server
- Node.js can collect form data
- Node.js can add, delete, modify data in your database
What Is a Node.js developer?
A Node.js developer is responsible for writing server-side web application logic in JavaScript. They are backend developers that are responsible for the following:
- Develop back-end components
- Connect the application with the other (often third-party) web services
- Support front-end developers by integrating their work with Node.js
Why Use Node.js?
Node.js serves to streamline server-side processing on web-apps, allowing them to handle massive amounts of individual data while remaining stable at the same time.
By utilizing the Javascript programming language to power its runtime environment, Node.js leverages the modern features of Javascript to make back-end development much more simple.
Over time Node.js has received immense long-term support in the form of performance updates and security fixes, this is most definitely an attractive aspect for enterprise-grade clients.
Knowing the infrastructure your company's web-services are built on is going to remain supported for the long-term future is a huge selling point when deciding on which type of backend environment the development team will use.
Node.js is approachable by teams looking to build smaller projects on it as well, it has a strong reputation for making server-side processing and back-end infrastructure remarkably easy if you already have some expertise in Javascript.
If you are a startup looking to deploy a backend-heavy web app, don’t hesitate to do so with Node.js.
One final note, Node.js is not advisable in CPU intensive applications.
Advantages of Using Node.js
Built upon Google Chrome's V8 engine, Node is the answer to large-scale backend systems in Javascript. Not actually acting as a framework, rather a runtime environment for Javascript, Node.js makes the challenges of designing, creating and deploying applications that use server-side processing a lot easier.
Scalability
Node.js is designed with scalability in mind, that’s why it’s called Node. Companies can scale their application either horizontally or vertically. Furthermore they can take advantage of Node’s cluster module to utilize the CPU.
Performance
Node.js interprets JavaScript code using Google's V8 JavaScript engine, which compiles JavaScript into machine code. As a result, processing speed is increased when working with backend technologies.
Full-Stack JS
Using Node.js as your backend means that you will be using JavaScript throughout your entire application. The benefit to this is that you won’t need to hire separate developers that know different languages.
Community
Node.js is part of the overall JavaScript community and is arguably one of the greatest achievements in JavaScript and modern web development. New Full-Stack and Backend developers are minted every day with at least some knowledge of Node.js.
Companies Who Use Node.js
We say Node.js is trusted, but by who? Let’s take a look at a few examples of companies doing big things by using Node.js for their backend development:
- Paypal
- Netflix
- Wal-Mart
- Mozilla
- Uber
- Trello
It’s fair to say that these are all household names for most people, it’s a testament to Node.js how many of these Fortune 500 companies use it for their back end programming.
But what is it about Node.js that makes it the de-facto choice for a lot of companies?
Luckily that question isn’t that hard to answer, a lot of these companies have come out and publicly discussed their experiences with Node.js.
Paypal, a company that handles a massive amount of transactions every day has attributed the faster performance to Node.js’s backend capabilities, while Netflix had success using Node.js to reduce startup times on their app so their 140 million subscribers can watch their content faster.
One of the largest American banks, Capital One, even heralded Node.js as a source of massively increased responsiveness within their app.
It’s clear why most of these companies are leaning on Node.js to handle their backend operations, it’s fast. In a world of web-apps for everything you can think of, a lot of data is being sent back and forth between servers and client-side.
Node.js has demonstrated that utilizing its framework can speed up this server-side processing and data-transfers immensely.
Hire a Node.js Developer
Hiring a Node.js is easy due to the fact that Node.js is part of the JavaScript stack, the most popular web technology currently in use.
Since Node.js tends to be a specialized topic when looking at it on its own, the quality of developers tends to be slightly higher than if you were hiring using more general terms.
For more information on how to hire developers, check out our free guide. Inside we go through how to find and hire remote software developers.
How to hire Node.js developers
Software development is a niche industry of the time. Unlike business or communications, success in the software development industry is more difficult to measure than by wealth or fame.But just like any other industry, experts have interest in sharing their best knowledge.
Trio, an outsourcing software development, seeks to help in more ways than one. As a bonus to our guide, we can also give you some guidance on what to look for in a Node.js developer and how to budget for costs.
And if after everything, the process of hiring a developer still seems confusing, you can come to us. Trio is here to get you the developers you need, and promptly.
What to look for in a Node.js developer
At a high level, Node.js developers should be able to:
- Understand TDD and be able to write Test / Implementing automated testing platforms and unit tests.
- Work with Git and GitHub
- Understand of Rest API Architecture
- Understand what asynchronous programming is all about and its workarounds.
- Understand what Semantic Versioning is
How much do Node.js developers cost in the U.S?
The average salary for a Senior Node.js developer is $119,500 per year in the United States, according to Ziprecruiter.com data.
Here’s a chart that visualizes the salary ranges within the United States for a Senior Software Developer.
How much do Node.js developers cost in South America?
Node.js developers cost notably less in South America than they do in the United States. This is due to the fluctuating economy in the region. As a consequence, senior developers in South America might make $100,000 and mid-level developers make something like $76,000.
How much do Node.js developers cost in Ukraine / Eastern Europe?
Salary expectations in Eastern Europe do not vary greatly from those in South America. For example, a Node.js developer in Eastern Europe likely makes $100,000.
Hourly rates for Node.js Developers
Paying hourly rates to your developers can be a good alternative to paying full-time salaries if you find you’ll only need Node.js developers for a limited time. Someone who is only working for you for 3-6 months may be less interested in knowing what a yearly salary would look like and more interested in what they can make in a couple of hours.
Here’s an hourly wage table mapped by region and skill level.
Why Hire a Node.js Developer
Node.js developers are sought out not by non-technical business managers but by other software developers in the industry at the expert level. Trio looks for candidates who are constantly learning something new and sharpening their programming skills.
These candidates, after coming to Trio, are trained further to refine their skills, not only with Node.js, but with other subject areas that are critical to software development.
Outsourcing doesn’t have to be hard, we make contracting one of our developers simple, allowing you to start your project in days, not weeks.
See how we can lend a hand with your upcoming Node.js project by starting a conversation with us today.
