Drupal Developer Roles: Know Everything Here!
You want to learn how to use Drupal professionally, so you’re looking into your options. You go to Google to look for the most well-liked—or, dare I say, very lucrative—Drupal jobs. Is that enough, though? Don’t you think that one important thing you’re overlooking is the essential talents needed for each of those roles?
If you have already researched Drupal in the past, you are aware of its growing stature as a potent and adaptable content management system. For their online presence, numerous well-known institutions, like Tesla, the Indian Government, Oxford University, and the United Nations, trust it. Because Drupal is an open-source platform, there are a lot of employment options available.
Therefore, if your goal is to succeed in the Drupal world, you undoubtedly have a lot of questions on your mind. Questions like: What is the function of a Drupal developer? Why should I pursue a career in Drupal? What are the skills required for a career in Drupal development?
We will address all of your urgent queries in this blog article, including one of the most well-known mysteries surrounding Drupal: Is learning Drupal difficult?
Why Choose a Career in Drupal?
For those who have a strong interest in digital technology, content management, and Drupal site development, a career in Drupal can have several advantages. The following are some advantages of working in Drupal:
High Demand for Drupal Developers: Drupal is used extensively worldwide by corporations, government agencies, and organizations to develop and administer their websites and web applications because of its scalability and security. Drupal development and administration are therefore in high demand, making it a profitable career choice.
Open-Source Community: The Drupal platform is free and open to developers, designers, site builders, and users. The community is active and friendly. Joining this large community can provide you with access to tools, excellent networking possibilities, and the opportunity to develop your skill set while contributing to other Drupal projects.
Continuous Learning and Skill Development: The Drupal ecosystem’s ongoing expansion provides opportunities for regular acquisition and application of new abilities. This can help you stay competitive in the field and maintain enthusiasm in your profession.
Competitive Salary: Because of your specific talents and the high demand for your knowledge, you can often anticipate earning a competitive salary as a Drupal developer or professional. Factors such as employment function, geography, experience, and area of expertise can all affect salary levels.
Remote Work Opportunities: You can work remotely from any location with an internet connection by doing Drupal development and support tasks frequently from a distance. Is there any flexibility more ideal than this? an improved work-life balance that lets you select the workplace of your choice!
Possibilities for Consulting and Freelancing: You have the choice to work as a consultant or as a freelancer since you can accept a range of assignments from various clients. This gives you professional freedom and flexibility.
Job Security: As more businesses choose Drupal as their content management system (CMS), there is an increasing need for Drupal experts to maintain, update, and grow these websites and applications. This growth in demand for specialists in the field contributes to a certain measure of job security.
Contribution to Open Source: Whether you’re working on the core Drupal project or creating modules and themes, working with Drupal gives you the opportunity to give back to the open-source community. This can improve your reputation professionally and be emotionally gratifying.
What Does a Drupal Developer Do?
There are many different job roles in Drupal development, and each one requires a unique set of knowledge and abilities. Now let’s examine seven of the most sought-after positions for Drupal developers:
Drupal Site Builder
Configuring and personalizing Drupal’s core capabilities and contributed modules is the main goal of a Drupal site builder when creating useful websites. Writing code is not usually your job as a site builder; instead, you should take use of Drupal’s flexibility by using its intuitive interface. To make sure that the website looks as well as the project’s design intends, you will have to work with designers and themers. Documentation, quality control, and user management will also fall under your purview.
Skills Required:
A thorough understanding of Drupal’s architecture, admin interface, modules, configuration, and platform operation is required. Additionally, you must be proficient in content modeling, the fundamentals of theming, user roles—including understanding and configuring them—views and layouts, and the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and version control (Git).
In addition to these technical abilities, you’ll need to be proficient in problem-solving, communication, and troubleshooting, and you’ll need to stay up to date with the Drupal platform’s ongoing evolution. You can assign a grading system to your Drupal Site Builder role based on how well you grasp the admin interface, modules, and configuration options.
Front-end Developer
A thorough understanding of Drupal’s architecture, admin interface, modules, configuration, and platform operation is required. Additionally, you must be proficient in content modeling, the fundamentals of theming, user roles—including understanding and configuring them—views and layouts, and the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and version control (Git).
In addition to these technical abilities, you’ll need to be proficient in problem-solving, communication, and troubleshooting, and you’ll need to stay up to date with the Drupal platform’s ongoing evolution. You can assign a grading system to your Drupal Site Builder role based on how well you grasp the admin interface, modules, and configuration options.
Skills Required:
To be considered for this position, you must be proficient in developing modern CSS, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, and Drupal theming techniques in addition to having practical knowledge of HTML5/XHTML elements. Twig ought to be simple for you to use on projects. You must have ease creating user interfaces for online programs or websites. Ensure that you can write JavaScript with ease, even without the use of jQuery or other frameworks. Additionally, you’ll need to be at ease using debugging tools like Firebug, Chrome Inspector, and others.
In addition to these technical details, you should be aware of how crucial CSS modifications are to preserving design uniformity across platforms and browsers while taking accessibility considerations into account. You should also be able to create basic HTML pages using detailed wireframes and layouts, as well as fill in any design gaps.
Back-end Developer
As the name implies, the back end of the website is the focus of your work here. You will have to work on the server side of Drupal as a Drupal Back-end Developer, integrating new features, building new modules, and performance optimization.
In addition, you will be in charge of database integration and website security. Setting up the web server and database server, connecting third-party APIs with the website, and, of course, troubleshooting and debugging are other essential duties.
Skills Required:
Make sure you become skilled in creating web solutions in Drupal and PHP implementations in a LAMP environment if you choose to pursue this position as a profession. In addition, you’ll need to brush up on your knowledge of Drupal theme layers, PHP files, and theme functions.
Your skills must match the architecture of data, display, and information architecture for Drupal enterprise applications. Gain a comprehensive understanding of site construction, which includes developing custom modules and doing a deeper investigation of Drupal modules like CTools, Views, and Panels.
You would also need to be technically proficient in MySQL, HTML, HTML/HTML5, CSS/CSS3, JavaScript/jQuery, Drupal’s API, and server-side technologies in order to create responsive websites. Having a solid understanding of software development and practical expertise with agile or iterative software development life cycles would make things lot easier for you.
Module Developer
Without modules and module developers, what would Drupal be? As a Module Developer, one of the complex Drupal roles, you will be required to develop unique Drupal modules to expand the capabilities of the CMS. Working on intricate projects that call for special features is one of your duties.
Writing, modifying, and optimizing PHP code is typically what module developers do in order to create and improve Drupal modules. While doing all of this, pay attention to Drupal coding guidelines. In addition to creating modules, you also have to keep them updated, maintained, and ensure that they are compatible and relevant.
Skills Required:
The ability to write in PHP and having a thorough understanding of Drupal’s architecture are prerequisites for Module Developers; without these, their ability to create custom modules would be limited. Drupal requires the implementation of many widely used design patterns, which require a fundamental grasp of other design patterns, software, late static bindings, and the factory pattern.
As part of the OOP design patterns, you should also have a basic understanding of dependency injection. You must have prior knowledge with the Symfony framework, plugin functionality, and services containers in addition to other frameworks.
Drupal Technical Architect
Drupal projects’ technical aspects are designed and managed by a Drupal Technical Architect. High-level planning and design, technical requirements definition, module and technology selection, and verifying that the Drupal solution satisfies the project’s objectives and scalability requirements are all part of your job description.
It will be your responsibility to gather requirements, design solutions, and make architectural decisions. In addition, you will have to oversee several development teams, evaluate code, and make sure that Drupal standards and best practices are adhered to. In summary, your overall task will be to build a solid technological base for Drupal projects.
Skills Required:
You will need to be quite knowledgeable with server optimization and Drupal’s performance-related modules if you choose to follow this career path. You’ll need to be proactive and capable of grasping every important facet of a project. You must be knowledgeable about the frontend, backend, and site-building task statuses of a project in order to lead Drupal projects. Furthermore, you should have a thorough understanding of Drupal optimization, which calls for a high degree of proficiency with PHP, jQuery, MySQL, CSS, and the use of Varnish, GeolP, UberCart, and other technologies.
Drupal Project Manager
In the Drupal field, your managerial function becomes more significant. You will be managing several Drupal development projects in your role as a Drupal project manager. It is your responsibility to make sure the projects are completed on time, within budget, and in compliance with client expectations. You will serve as the intermediary between developers and clients. You will need to use project management software as a Drupal project manager in order to keep tabs on milestones and track the advancement of the Drupal tasks completed by your team.
Skills Required:
Larger skill sets come with more obligations. As the manager here, you’ll need to establish strong project management talents, proficiency with tools like Jira and Redmine, knowledge of Drupal development procedures, and outstanding communication skills.
In addition to these job-specific competencies, you should comprehend budgeting, target-setting, goal-setting, and negotiating techniques, as well as have a foundational comprehension of web technology. You will be expected to be an independent worker that is client-focused, meticulous, and a leader as a Drupal project manager.
Is it Hard to Learn Drupal?
There is an easy way to respond to this query. The degree of difficulty won’t matter if you’re passionate about web development; instead, you’ll love the process of learning something new. However, things get a little complicated if you are unfamiliar with Drupal and web development altogether.
Drupal can be difficult and enjoyable to learn. Although the platform is easy to use for novices due to its intuitive interface, more experienced users may find it challenging to learn more complex features like performance optimization and custom module development.
The good news is that developers of all skill levels may get assistance from the Drupal community, which provides a wealth of tools, tutorials, and support. With the goal of making Drupal simpler for new users, Drupal’s most recent strategic initiatives, such as the Project Browser, Automatic Updates, Easy out of the box, Recipes, and others, are easing the learning curve.
Anyone can become adept in Drupal development with commitment and a well-structured learning path.
Conclusion
Drupal development companies like Appic Softwares play a crucial role in the Drupal ecosystem. They are organizations specializing in Drupal development and offer a wide range of services, including site development, theming, module development, maintenance, and ongoing support.
You can even hire dedicated Drupal developers from us and let them your store.
So, what are you waiting for?
