Differences Between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer

I often say that we primarily hire software engineers (and some developers). However, many times that distinction is not clear to our clients. Software engineer and software developer are sometimes used interchangeably, and although their roles and responsibilities could closely overlap, there is a fundamental difference in the design philosophy that differentiates the two.

Note: There are also software coders and software programmers, but both are different than software engineers and software developers, and a topic for another discussion. 

First obvious difference is in the scope of their responsibilities, which is always higher and more complex for engineers than developers, which is also reflected in higher pay for engineers than developers.

It is important to know the difference well when considering which software consultancy to hire. The issue is not whether a consultancy offers engineers or developers (or both). The issue often arises when clients believe they are paying for an engineer, but are instead being given a developer. Knowing the difference will spare you from headaches down the road when your expectations are not met.

A rule of thumb is to think of developers as more creative and engineers as more precise. However, there is nothing simple about understanding their differences, so this often causes issues to companies who want to hire one vs. the other but don’t have clear understanding of how to differentiate them.

To stick to the object oriented analogy – engineer class inherits from developer class, which means engineers do all that developers can do, and then some, while engineers can do some of the things engineers do, but not all, and certainly not at a level engineers operate. Engineers do things on a larger, more complex, scale than developers, period.

Engineers have to be more systematic in their approach, and take a bigger picture view than developers. Engineers are trained to apply system-level thinking in their approach to solving problems. They not only have to solve problem at hand, but also evaluate how that solution impacts the overall system, while minimizing the negative impact to the system as a whole.

Sometime you can differentiate between the two just by knowing their background, and how they present themselves. Developers often identify themselves by expertise in a specific domain knowledge, often listing languages they are proficient at (e.g. React, Node, Java).

Engineers on the other hand would typically describe themselves in a more general way, such as full-stack, or systems engineer, even though they also are proficient in various languages. Engineers approach problems in a mathematical way, by quantifying their decisions, and strategize like a chess player, thinking many steps ahead about how will their decisions impact the system now, and in the future, as the system grows and connects to other systems.

In summary, some of the ways you can understand the differences between a software engineer and a software developer:

·     A developer is responsible for finding solutions to a specific problem, while engineers are responsible for an entire system.

·     A developer is allowed to be more creative, and tends to work more with clients, while engineers are more precise, and prefer working with a wide range of engineering principles.

·     An engineer has a higher level of technical proficiency than a developer.

·     A developer is responsible to make sure the software works, while an engineer is responsible that the software meets stakeholders’ requirements.

·     An engineer would typically be expected to understand and work with cloud-based systems, build scalable pipelines, participate in continuous integration and continuous delivery, ensure resilience and fault tolerance, and other things, while a developer would rarely, or not at all, have any of these responsibilities.

·     A developer builds/executes software, while an engineer designs software using the engineering principles.