What is the difference between a software engineer and a software developer?
Know the difference between software engineer, software developer web developer, programmer, coder, front end engineer, backend engineer, principal engineer, and software architect.
Key Takeaways
There is no difference between a software engineer and a software developer, they both do the same thing.
At Google, software engineers are called software engineers. At Amazon, they're called software development engineers, and sometimes for short, software developer.
Knowing the differences between software engineer, software developer, web developer, programmer, coder, front end engineer, backend engineer, principal engineer, and software architect will help you not look like the dinosaur of your team. As the leader of your organization, even if your company is not technology-based, it is beneficial to understand the differences of these roles in the event you would like to do the following:
Explore innovation opportunities for the company
Hire someone to build an app for better customer service
Converting your records from analog to digital
Create automation for your processes and systems
Software Engineer vs. Software Developer
The difference between a software engineer and a software developer is absolutely nothing. Again, there is no difference between a software engineer and a software developer, they both do the same thing.
They both prepare for their technical interviews, coding, interview systems, design interviews, using the same platform.
Overall, in the software engineering industry or the software development industry (see, I'm using the two interchangeably), nobody distinguishes between a software engineer and a software developer. They're the same thing.
Case in point: At Google, software engineers are called software engineers. That's their official title. At Amazon, they're called software development engineers, and sometimes for short, software developer.
Why the difference? No reason at all.
Backend engineer and front end engineer
These titles are subsets of the other two titles: software engineer and software developer. Think of a software engineer or a software developer as a rectangle. And then you can think of a backend engineer or front end engineer as a square. It is a type of rectangle, a type of engineer.
According to glassdoor.com
Front end engineers plan, design, build, and implement the user interface systems of websites, software programs, and web-based applications. Their primary goal is to provide a satisfactory user experience with no issues, errors, or downtime.
According to DistantJob.com
A backend engineer is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the server-side of web applications. In other words, a backend engineer’s primary responsibility is to build the structure of a software application.
Specifically, a backend engineer or a front end engineer is a software engineer who specializes in either the backend or the front end, which is a part of the software stack:
Mobile Engineer
A mobile engineer is a software engineer who specializes in developing mobile applications. Android engineers or iOS engineers are mobile engineers who specialize either in Android development or iOS development. All these sort of specialized versions of software engineers are ultimately software engineers and software developers.
At some companies, like Google for example, they often don't call you an iOS engineer. They'll just call you a software engineer. And your job will happen to involve development on iOS.
Web Developer
One title that's kind of interesting is the web developer title. A web developer ultimately, is just a front end engineer. Though sometimes people will think of a web developer as lesser than a front end engineer (as if a web developer is a more junior role or just less prestigious role). But again, this is just kind of a weird preconceived notion. Ultimately, a web developer is synonymous with a front end engineer.
In fact, I would even argue that a web developer is sometimes a little bit broader than a front end engineer, because sometimes web developers will also work on the backend of their websites. So a web developer is more like a full stack engineer.
UI Engineer
Usually, web developer means front end engineer. And those two are also the same thing as a UI engineer.
At Facebook, for example, front end engineers are called “UIEs” or UI engineers.
Senior Software Engineer, Staff Software engineer, Principal software engineer
Titles like: senior software engineer, staff software engineer, or principal software engineer are all seniority epithets.
So a principal software engineer is a software engineer who happens to be much more senior than your typical software engineer or staff software engineer. However they are the same thing.
This is why you'll often see some people who are really high up at companies like Google, but who really don't care about sort of outward prestige, who will still have on their LinkedIn or on their resume “software engineer” even though they have 10 years of work experience and are officially called principal software engineers.
Ultimately, their job is still a software engineer and they do software engineering work,
Software Architect
Software architect is a unique role. Usually a software architect is effectively at the level of a staff software engineer, or even a principal software engineer.
The term architect usually means that they spend much more of their time doing higher level sort of software architecture work, where they're designing projects, or setting up projects rather than actually doing a bunch of code or feature development.
A software architect is very similar to something like a principal engineer.
Progammer and Coder
These are titles are not often used in the industry, but you'll often hear the general population refer to software engineers as programmers or coders.
However, the general population is right:
A software engineer is a programmer.
A programmer is a software engineer.
A software engineer does programming (or writes code).
Some people think that a coder and programmer are lesser than a software engineer. They'll often think that a coder or programmer is someone who just sort of mindlessly types out code that is given to them by the software engineers. However, a reputable company would not hire two separate roles where the software engineer writes the code, develops it, and then gives it to the programmer to type out.
Remember, as the leader of your organization, it is beneficial to understand the differences of these roles (even your current industry isn’t technology based). Workforces, industries, and innovations are moving towards a digital landscape and you don’t want your company to be extinct (sorry, had to throw in a dinosaur reference again).