Demand for Golang Developers is Steadily Increasing
Golang, or simply Go, is an open-source programming language that was developed by Google, and designed to be simple, efficient, and reliable. It is a statically typed language, allowing it to offer performance similar to languages like C and C++. Additionally, Golang provides garbage collection, memory safety, and features a lightweight goroutine model for concurrency, making it well suited for building scalable, high-performance applications.
With the need for speed and efficiency in modern applications, the demand for Golang developers has been steadily increasing. According to Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey, 13.5% of software engineers have worked extensively with Go in 2024, and it is used by top tech companies like Meta, Dropbox, Microsoft, and Netflix. Golang’s performance and versatility allows it to be used in a wide variety of applications and systems, including cloud and networking tools, data science, web services, DevOps automation, and microservices architectures.
This guide provides insights on how to hire the best Golang developers, with detailed tips on how to: run the hiring process, identify the attributes of a high-quality developer, write an effective job description, and interview candidates to assess their problem-solving abilities, technical skills, and fit for the position.
What Attributes Distinguish Quality Golang Developers From Others?
Golang has a straightforward and easy-to-learn syntax, especially for developers who have a background in C, Java, or Python; however, there are certain skills that are particularly helpful to Go programming. An experienced candidate will not only have skills that cover software development in general, but also a deep knowledge of the core aspects of the Go language.
Concurrency: Experienced Go developers have proficiency with Go’s concurrency model and know how to implement its goroutines and channels for effective parallel processing. Candidates should have an understanding of parallel processing and how to use it efficiently to write programs that perform well on distributed systems.
Memory Management: Knowledge of Go’s memory management is crucial for the development process of high-performance and scalable applications. Candidates should know how Go handles garbage collection and memory allocation, and be able to optimize resource usage and avoid memory leaks.
Go’s Standard Library: All candidates should have experience with Go’s versatile standard library, using its packages to perform standard tasks like I/O, JSON processing, networking, and data encoding.
Dependency Management: Skilled Go developers understand Go’s module system and how to effectively manage dependencies, so there are no issues when building across environments.
Error Handling: With Go, errors are explicitly signaled or returned, enabling the code to determine the next actions. Explicit error handling has many benefits, including reducing unhandled exceptions and making the code more reliable, however, developers need to consciously check for and respond to errors. Candidates should know how to leverage explicit error handling to write code that is stable and reliable.
Build and Deployment Tools: Go developer candidates should know the differences between go build, go mod, and go run, and when to use them to maximize efficiency when compiling, deploying, and running applications.
How Can You Identify the Ideal Golang Developer for You?
Because Golang can be used for so many different types of applications, it is important to identify the complementary technologies that are relevant to a project. Skills that are required for back-end web development might be different than the ones required for infrastructure management. Top talent with experience in technologies relevant to your development project will be able to get up to speed quickly.
Complementary Technology Skills for Golang Developers
RESTful APIs: Many Go developers are called upon to develop RESTful APIs for web applications that rely on web services. Candidates should be familiar with frameworks like Gin or Echo to deliver reliable and scalable REST APIs.
Testing: Top Golang developers prioritize testing because they know that code reliability is essential for any application. Candidates should have experience with integration and unit testing using Go Testing, or third party frameworks like Testify and Ginkgo.
Database Interaction and Management: Most modern applications connect and exchange data with databases, so Go developer candidates should have working experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, as well as libraries like GORM.
Cloud Services: Many modern applications take advantage of services provided by cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP. Golang experts leverage the cloud in a cost-effective manner, building and deploying scalable, resilient applications.
Networking Protocols: Candidates for projects that involve building networked applications should have a strong grasp of networking protocols such as HTTP, TCP/IP, and gRPC.
Containerization and Orchestration: Many modern applications are deployed in containers, simplifying distribution and improving scalability. Docker and Kubernetes are invaluable skills for any Go developer.
Front-end Technologies: For web applications where Go is used on the back end, understanding the front-end technologies will help Go developers better collaborate with the front-end team. Additionally, dedicated Golang developers who are well versed in front-end development also excels at full-stack development. Modern front-end technologies are typically based on JavaScript and include React, Angular, and Vue.js.
Determining the Required Golang Developer Expertise Level
Beyond technical requirements, the experience level of a candidate should also be considered. When developing a project from scratch, it is essential to hire a senior developer who can design the architecture for performance and scalability. It’s a good idea for startups that are building an MVP to leverage the experience of a senior developer. On the other hand, junior developers—although still honing soft skills and technical abilities—are well suited to adding new features for existing projects with clearly defined requirements.
Junior Go developers have one to three years of experience. They are skilled programmers, however, they have limited professional experience and often benefit from mentoring from a more experienced hand. Junior developers may be in the process of learning best practices for error handling, concurrency with goroutines and channels, and DevOps processes. Typical tasks for junior developers include writing and running unit tests, debugging, and implementing new features that are well defined and straightforward.
Mid-level Go developers have three to five years of experience. They have strong programming skills and are adept at using Go’s concurrency features and modules for dependency management. They are capable of advanced tasks such as designing and developing RESTful APIs, optimizing applications for performance and scalability, and interacting with and managing SQL and NoSQL databases. Mid-level developers often mentor junior developers and contribute to code reviews.
Senior Go developers have more than five years of experience. They have a deep understanding of Go, including concepts like reflection, interfacing, and advanced concurrency patterns. Senior developers lead the development of large and complex applications, designing the architecture and optimizing its performance. They also mentor team members and make decisions, both technical and strategic.
How to Write a Golang Developer Job Description for Your Project
With Golang being used in such a wide range of application types, the first step in writing an effective job description is defining project requirements. Identify the skills that are essential, as well as your complete tech stack. The more detailed the job description is, the more luck you’ll have attracting the right candidates.
Start with an overview of the project, its business goals, and its current status. If you do not feel comfortable disclosing the details of your project, list some similar projects so that candidates have an idea of what they’ll be working on. Summarize the complementary technologies you are using, such as your databases, cloud provider, and version control system. Include any other tools and methodologies that your development team uses, whether it’s Agile for project management or continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) for deployment. Finally, list the position’s key responsibilities as well as its expected seniority level.
Talking about your company, its culture, and the onboarding experience is also important—it will help you attract the right type of candidates. Specify the location of the job and whether you are looking for onsite, hybrid, or remote Golang developers, as well as if the position is full-time or part-time. When vetting remote developers, make sure their time zone allows convenient collaboration with the rest of your team.
What Are the Most Important Golang Developer Interview Questions?
Once your job posting starts attracting candidates, you will need to interview them to assess their skill sets. You can start by asking candidates to describe previous Go projects. Then pick one of the projects and ask them to detail successes within the project in addition to things they would have done differently. Look for opportunities to transition into more technical questions to gauge their understanding of the subject. The following technical questions provide good starting points for discussions which will give you insight into a candidate’s experience and technical skills.
What are goroutines and what are they used for?
Goroutines are lightweight functions or methods that are executed independently of each other. They are often executed simultaneously with other Goroutines, and form the basis for concurrency and parallel processing in Go. An understanding of goroutines is essential for any candidate because the golang programming language is very often selected for its parallel processing capabilities, a key contributor to scalability and performance.
What do channels in Go do?
Channels enable communication between goroutines, allowing them to synchronize their execution. They allow data to be sent and received safely between concurrent goroutines without the need for explicit locks. Channels are unbuffered by default, meaning that if data that is sent to the channel is not retrieved, additional data cannot be received. Channels can be buffered to allow multiple pieces of data to be sent before blocking. Buffering is used to decouple the timing between data production and consumption, increasing independence between goroutines and efficiency in concurrent tasks. Candidates should be familiar with channels, as they are an integral part of parallel programming in Go, and give developers much more control over the synchronization of goroutines.
How does Go manage packages and modules?
Modules are collections of related packages that can be shared with other developers. Go Modules are a good method of managing dependencies. In the application’s directory, the go.mod file defines the module’s import path and dependencies. Running go mod tidy will download and update dependencies. Because applications are typically deployed on multiple environments, candidates need to have a solid understanding of dependency management in Go.
What is the difference between a slice and an array?
Slices and arrays both represent collections, however, slices are more flexible than arrays. Slices are essentially dynamic views into an underlying array. The length of arrays cannot be changed, however, slices can be dynamically resized; for example, appending elements with the append function. Candidates should have an understanding of slices and arrays, as working with collections is a fundamental part of software development.
Explain the use of the defer statement.
When calling a function from within another function, the defer statement can be used to defer, or postpone, the execution of a function until the surrounding function finishes running. It is typically used for resource management, for example, waiting until after a file is read before closing it. Candidates should have experience using defer to manage resources and avoid resource leaks.
How do you handle data race conditions in Go?
A data race condition can occur when multiple goroutines access the same data concurrently, and at least one of them is a write. This can cause unpredictable behavior, because the times of the reads and writes are difficult to determine. To prevent data races, access to shared data must be synchronized using mutexes or with channels. With any application that uses concurrent programming, data race conditions are a risk. In order to prevent bugs that are difficult to diagnose, candidates should have a strong understanding of synchronization
Why Do Companies Hire Golang Programmers?
The Go programming language is known for its versatility, efficiency, and performance. It is a preferred choice for modern programming because its built-in concurrent programming capabilities enable it to scale seamlessly for applications such as high-traffic web services, networking tools, and distributed systems. With an emphasis on reliability, performance, and scalability, companies are increasingly turning to Go. Major tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Netflix, as well as Google, the developers of Go, have already leveraged the language to build many of their back-end systems and tools. Both Docker and Kubernetes use Go in their source code. Because of Go’s proven track record, more and more companies are integrating Go into their technology stack and the demand for developers skilled in the language will continue to grow.
