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IoT has become an important part of business development in many industries. Organisations use IoT to enhance performance, increase efficiency, improve customer service and facilitate decision-making processes. All this increases business value and becomes a significant competitive advantage for companies.
Logistics and transportation, healthcare and manufacturing – these are only few areas where IoT has been successfully implemented. The demand for IoT grows and is not likely to stop any time soon creating a shortage of IoT professionals.
Due to its complexity, IoT technology is hard to implement without dedicated experts. Therefore, almost 20% of all businesses refrain from applying it and according to survey run by Microsoft, 47% of the companies lack qualified personnel to implement this solution.
Yet the undoubtful benefit of IoT motivates businesses to seek professional help and hire development teams that specialise in IoT.
Let us see what it takes to hire or build a team of IoT developers.
The three most common options are:
– to build an internal team by hiring IoT developers;
– to outsource professional IoT developers or
– to use both.
These options are good on their own merits. Which one you will use largely depends on your company needs and the resources available.
Building a team of in-house IoT developers may be quite challenging especially for a company that has no experience developing IoT software. If an in-house team of developers is crucial, a good alternative would be a combination of outsource and in-house IoT specialists.
The cast of your development team will vary depending on your business requirements. A full-cycle IoT project usually requires two Senior C++ Software Developers, a Middle UI/UX Designer, a Senior DevOps, and two Middle QA specialists. Additionally, you may need to seek professional advice from mobile app developers, security, Cloud, Big Data and BI specialists. What is important though is that these specialists should be able to navigate you through every stage of development process – from prototyping to post-deployment support.
When you opt to contract IoT developers, you should pay attention to a number of aspects.
- Portfolio
Technical skills as well as successfully implemented projects are important indicators of a reliable provider. However, in this case make sure you check the provider’s track record of IoT projects in particular. They should be able to demonstrate a portfolio of IoT-related projects implemented in various industries combined with positive clients’ reviews.
- Tech Stack
Depending on the product that you want to develop, your supplier should have the necessary technical skills to implement your ideas. Your IoT developers need to have good understanding of how data structures, design patterns, control systems and algorithms work. On top of this, they must have solid knowledge of how sensors and wireless communication work, understand networking technologies, different types of memory, microprocessors, and protocols as well as have experience working with General-Purpose Operating Systems (GPOS) and Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS).
As IoT projects use C/C++ languages, your developers need to have proficient level of operating these programming languages.
Additionally, the knowledge of Java, .NET, Python, Javascript, Node.js may be required for certain projects.
- Knowledge of hardware and embedded systems
The use of hardware to maximise benefits for the end users in IoT projects is just as important. It is vital that your developers know the hardware that they work on. The specifics of IoT projects is that they may additionally require data processing or computing and memory powers. So ideally, your developers should be able to deal with this to optimise system, provide suitable configuration of form factors, CPU, memory, storage etc.
Another important aspect to consider is the system security. Assess the possible risks and threats and make sure your developers address these issues in system implementation.
So, where to look for IoT developers?
The top three destinations that supply the best IoT developers remain Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. We will be looking at the latter for its value for money and a number of other benefits.
Eastern Europe has been demonstrating exceptional level of IT professionals over the past years. The number of IT skills that this region offers includes all sort of programming languages, platforms, frameworks and more. The region offers over 170 000 of C/C++ developers alone, including IoT professionals. The ease of doing business in this part of the world combined with the large talent pool makes this destination a truly valuable source of IT experts. Two countries that supply the largest number of qualified and experienced software developers in the region are Ukraine and Poland.
Let us see how these two countries progressed in talent supply for IoT developers.
Ukraine
Ukraine has achieved recognition for its IT talents. Over 190 000 of software engineers, 1600 software development suppliers, over 10 000 C/C++ developers make this country the largest IT talent supplier in the region. IAOP association recognised 13 Ukrainian IT companies as the best outsourcing providers in the world.
Ukrainian IoT developers are known for their robust IT skills and their knowledge of
IoT compatible languages like Assembly, C and C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Node.js. Moreover, Ukraine practices STEM education, which encourages continuous talent inflow. Ukraine’s universities offer the IoT Bachelor and Artificial Intelligence degrees as well as educational programs on data science, cyber security and others. This explains why companies prefer to outsource IT professionals from Ukraine to develop IoT. Local developers have showcased number of successfully implemented IoT projects, good level of technical skills, strong programming background and good knowledge of English.
Poland
Poland’s membership to EU granted this country stable economic development and friendly environment for business environment. Being exposed to the global IT market, Poland can boast strong IT infrastructure and a close vicinity to Western Europe. Poland with its talent pool has made it to the top 5 of the best developers in the world. Although only 11 out of 500 large suppliers offer IoT solution development, Poland remains an attractive destination for doing business.
On top of this, having established the centralised AI strategy, Poland continues to develop the domestic market of IoT and monitors the state of IoT development in the country. This creates additional job opportunities for IoT developers locally, but comes in a way for outsourcing.
Whichever option you decide to choose, having these tips at hand will help you find the right team of developers to implement your ideas.
Here at Magnise, we are happy to guide you through stages and processes that your project may require. Contact us to find out more and get closer to your dream product.
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