6 templates for companies hiring server-side engineers without an engineering department: standard, junior, senior, API, first in-house hire, and contract. Download as DOCX.
The first back end developer job description I ever wrote was useless. I listed eleven technologies, asked for a computer science degree, and never once said what the person would actually own. The engineers I wanted read it, decided we did not know what we needed, and applied somewhere else. The ones who did apply matched the keyword list and nothing else.
Back end postings fail in a specific way. The work is invisible, so the posting describes tools instead of responsibility. A front end candidate can look at your product and see the job. A back end candidate cannot see anything at all, which means every signal has to come from the words you wrote.
At FirstHR we write hiring templates for companies without an HR department, and increasingly without an engineering department either. The six below cover a standard back end role, a junior hire, a senior architect, an API specialist, a first in-house engineering hire, and a contract engagement, each with the classification and intellectual property notes that generic templates leave out.
TL;DR
A back end developer job description should name your exact stack, define the ownership boundary (application code only, or deployment and data too), and state the FLSA classification. Most back end developers are exempt under the computer employee exemption at $684 per week or $27.63 per hour, but juniors below that floor are not. Six templates below, downloadable as DOCX.
What a Back End Developer Owns
A back end developer owns everything the customer never sees: the APIs, the business logic, the data model, the background jobs, and the integrations with other systems. The title covers at least four different jobs, and the posting has to say which one you are hiring for.
That ambiguity is the root cause of most bad back end hires. A company posts for a back end developer, means an infrastructure engineer, interviews an API specialist, and hires someone who leaves in eight months. The templates on this page separate those cases so the posting matches the work.
Application and API work
The default meaning
Business logic, endpoints, authentication, background jobs, and the integrations that make a product work. This is what most small companies mean when they post for a back end developer, and it is what the standard template covers.
Data-heavy work
Closer to a data role
Schema design at scale, query tuning, warehousing, and pipelines. If the posting is mostly this, you may be hiring a database or data engineer instead, and the pay benchmark shifts with the title.
Infrastructure and deployment
Overlaps with platform
Provisioning, CI/CD, containers, monitoring, and on-call. Small companies fold this into the back end role by necessity. Say so in the posting rather than surprising the hire in week two.
Integrations and partner APIs
A specialty of its own
Consuming other people's APIs, publishing your own, and owning webhooks, retries, and versioning. It rewards clear technical writing as much as coding, which most postings never mention.
Name the Stack in the First Two Lines
Back end skills are specific in a way that general engineering skills are not. A developer with six years of Python and PostgreSQL is not interchangeable with one who has six years of Java and Oracle, and both know it. Put the language, framework, database, and cloud provider in the opening paragraph rather than burying them under a list of soft requirements. Candidates self-select on that line in the first ten seconds, which saves you the screening calls that go nowhere.
What Belongs in the Posting
A back end developer job description does four jobs at once: it describes the system, it filters unqualified applicants, it protects you legally, and it closes the candidate. Most postings do only the first two, which is why they attract volume without conversion.
The parts engineers read first
The stack, named exactly: language, framework, database, cloud
What the system does and roughly how big it is
Team size and who the developer works with daily
Remote, hybrid, or onsite, stated without hedging
The parts that filter applicants
Years of production experience, and production is the key word
Ownership boundaries: services, data model, deployment, on-call
Required versus nice to have, kept honestly separate
Whether legacy code is part of the job
The parts that protect you
FLSA classification stated on the posting
Confidentiality and invention assignment as a condition of hire
Company ownership of repositories, domains, and cloud accounts
Equal opportunity statement
The parts that win the hire
A real salary range, not a placeholder
Equity or bonus structure if you offer one
The interview process, stage by stage, with a timeline
What the developer gets to decide, not just deliver
The most common omission at small companies is the ownership boundary. Does the developer deploy their own code? Own the database? Carry a pager? Answer those three questions in the posting, because leaving them vague reads as a company that has not decided, and a strong engineer will assume the answer is the worst one. Our guide to writing a job description covers the general structure, and the rest of the hiring templates library covers adjacent roles.
6 Back End Developer Job Description Templates to Download
Download all six as one file or copy them individually. Each follows the same structure: company and system overview, position summary, key responsibilities, required qualifications, a classification and compliance note, an intellectual property clause, an equal opportunity statement, and how to apply. The bracketed fields are the only parts you need to change.
Download All 6 Back End Developer Job Description Templates
Standard, junior, senior, API developer, small business first hire, and contract. All in one download.
Back End Developer (Standard)
Any employer
The stack-agnostic baseline: services, data model, APIs, jobs, and integrations. Start here for a general back end hire.
Junior Back End Developer
Entry-level
For a first-job hire: scoped tickets, a named mentor, a ramp plan, and the classification note that matters most at entry pay.
Senior Back End Developer
Architecture and standards
For a technical leader: system design, migrations, incident response, mentoring, and the highly compensated employee test.
API Developer / Integrations
Contracts and webhooks
For a published API surface: versioning, documentation, rate limiting, webhooks, and the partners who depend on all of it.
Small Business / First Hire
No engineering team yet
For the first in-house developer: inheriting an agency codebase, owning deployment, and explaining tradeoffs to a non-technical owner.
Contract / Fractional
Defined scope, real end date
For project work: deliverables, acceptance criteria, IP assignment, and an honest look at when a contractor is really an employee.
Template 1: Back End Developer (Standard)
The stack-agnostic baseline covering services, data model, APIs, background jobs, and integrations. Start here for a general back end hire, then delete the sections that do not apply to your system.
Back End Developer Job Description (Standard)
BACK END DEVELOPER JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State] / Remote / Hybrid)
Reports to: [Engineering Lead / CTO / Founder]
Employment type: Full-time
FLSA status: Exempt (computer employee; see classification note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT [COMPANY NAME]
[Company Name] builds [product, in one sentence] for [customer]. Our back end is
[language and framework] running on [cloud provider], with [PostgreSQL / MySQL /
MongoDB] behind it and [REST / GraphQL / gRPC] APIs serving [web app / mobile
app / partner integrations]. The engineering team is [number] people.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Back End Developer designs, builds, and maintains the server-side systems
behind our product: the APIs, the data model, the background jobs, and the
integrations. You own how data is stored, how it moves, and how fast it comes
back, and you work with the front end and product to ship features end to end.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Design, build, and maintain server-side services in [language and framework]
•Design and evolve the data model in [database], including migrations
•Build and document [REST / GraphQL] APIs consumed by [clients]
•Write automated tests and take part in code review
•Build and maintain background jobs, queues, and scheduled tasks
•Experience in [our industry or regulatory environment]
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE (read before posting)
Under the FLSA computer employee exemption, an employee whose primary duty is
the design, development, testing, or modification of computer systems or
programs may be exempt if paid at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis,
or at least $27.63 per hour. Confirm your state rules, because several states
set a higher salary threshold or a different duties test. State law controls
where it is more protective. This is general information, not legal advice.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
Employment is contingent on signing our confidentiality and invention assignment
agreement. Code, schemas, and documentation created in the scope of employment
belong to [Company Name].
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [equity], [benefits summary]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a link to code you
have written or a system you have built.
Template 2: Junior Back End Developer
For an entry-level hire: scoped tickets, a named mentor, a written ramp plan, and the pay floor that decides whether the role is exempt. If you are hiring across the stack instead, the full stack developer templates cover that shape.
Junior Back End Developer Job Description (Entry-Level)
JUNIOR BACK END DEVELOPER JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State] / Remote / Hybrid)
Reports to: [Senior Back End Developer / Engineering Lead]
Employment type: Full-time
FLSA status: Exempt or non-exempt depending on pay and duties (see note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] is hiring a Junior Back End Developer to work on our [language
and framework] services alongside [number] senior engineers. This is a role for
someone early in their career: you will get real tickets, real code review, and
a named mentor. Bootcamp graduates and self-taught developers are welcome to
apply if the work samples hold up.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Junior Back End Developer implements well-defined server-side tasks under
the guidance of a senior engineer, writes tests, fixes bugs, and grows toward
owning features independently within [timeframe].
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Implement scoped back end tickets in [language and framework]
•Write unit and integration tests for the code you ship
•Fix bugs reported by [support / monitoring] with guidance on priority
•Write and run database queries and simple migrations under review
•Take part in code review as an author and, over time, as a reviewer
•Keep documentation current for the endpoints and jobs you touch
•Ask early when you are stuck: we would rather answer than rewrite
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Working knowledge of [language] and basic SQL
•Understanding of how HTTP and APIs work, at a level you can explain
•A portfolio, personal project, internship, or bootcamp capstone we can read
•Willingness to work in an existing codebase rather than start from scratch
WHAT WE PROVIDE
•A named mentor and scheduled one-on-ones
•Code review on every pull request, written to teach
•A [30 / 60 / 90] day ramp plan with clear expectations
•[Learning budget, conference budget, paid study time]
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
Junior engineers are the roles most often misclassified. The FLSA computer
employee exemption requires both a qualifying primary duty and pay of at least
$684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at least $27.63 per hour. An
entry-level developer paid below that floor is non-exempt: track hours and pay
overtime past 40 hours in a week. Several states set a higher threshold. Unpaid
trial projects and unpaid internships at a for-profit company carry their own
risk. This is general information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [benefits summary]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a link to something
you built, with a short note on what was hard about it.
Still Using Spreadsheets for Onboarding?
Automate documents, training assignments, task management, and track onboarding progress in real time.
For a technical leader: architecture ownership, zero-downtime migrations, incident response, mentoring, and the highly compensated employee threshold that usually applies at senior pay.
•Prior experience as a first or early engineer at a small company
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
A senior back end developer is almost always exempt under the FLSA computer
employee or professional exemption, and at senior pay levels the highly
compensated employee test (total annual compensation of at least $107,432 with
at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis) usually applies as well.
Exempt status still rests on actual duties, not the title. Confirm your state
threshold, which may be higher. This is general information, not legal advice.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
Employment is contingent on signing our confidentiality and invention assignment
agreement. If you maintain open source projects, list them before you start so
we can carve them out in writing rather than argue about them later.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [equity range], [benefits]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a short description
of a system you designed and what you would change about it now.
Template 4: API Developer / Integrations Engineer
For a published API surface: versioning and deprecation policy, documentation as a deliverable, rate limiting, webhooks with retries, and the partners who depend on every promise the contract makes.
API Developer / Integrations Engineer Job Description
API DEVELOPER / INTEGRATIONS ENGINEER JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State] / Remote / Hybrid)
Reports to: [Engineering Lead / Head of Platform]
Employment type: Full-time
FLSA status: Exempt (computer employee; see classification note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] connects to [number] external systems and exposes a public API
used by [customers, partners, or internal clients]. We are hiring an API
Developer to own that surface: the endpoints we publish, the integrations we
consume, and the contracts between them.
POSITION SUMMARY
The API Developer designs, builds, documents, and versions our API, and builds
integrations with third-party systems. The job is equal parts engineering and
diplomacy: the contract you publish is a promise other teams and other companies
will depend on for years.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Design and build [REST / GraphQL / gRPC] endpoints with consistent conventions
•Own the versioning and deprecation policy, and communicate breaking changes
•Write and maintain API documentation and [OpenAPI / GraphQL] schemas
•Build integrations with [payment processor, CRM, email, ERP, partner APIs]
•Implement authentication, rate limiting, pagination, and idempotency
•Build webhook delivery with retries, signatures, and a replay path
•Instrument endpoints and watch latency, error rates, and usage per client
•Support the developers and partners who consume the API
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•[Number] years building production APIs in [language and framework]
•Practical command of HTTP semantics, status codes, and caching
•Experience with authentication standards: [OAuth 2.0, API keys, JWT]
•Experience integrating third-party APIs that were poorly documented
•Clear technical writing: your documentation is part of the deliverable
This role sits squarely inside the FLSA computer employee exemption when the
primary duty is designing, developing, and testing systems and programs and pay
meets the threshold: at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at
least $27.63 per hour. If the day is mostly configuring vendor tools rather than
building software, the exemption is a weaker fit. Confirm your state threshold.
This is general information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [benefits summary]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a link to API
documentation you wrote or an integration you built.
Template 5: Back End Developer (Small Business / First Engineering Hire)
For the first in-house developer at a company with no engineering team: inheriting an agency-built codebase, owning deployment and backups, and explaining tradeoffs to a non-technical owner. It says out loud what the job really is, because the wrong hire here is expensive for both sides.
Back End Developer Job Description (Small Business / First Engineering Hire)
BACK END DEVELOPER JOB DESCRIPTION (SMALL BUSINESS / FIRST ENGINEERING HIRE)
Company: __ ([City, State] / Remote / Hybrid)
Reports to: [Owner / Founder]
Employment type: Full-time
FLSA status: Exempt (computer employee; see classification note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT [COMPANY NAME] AND WHAT THIS ROLE REALLY IS
[Company Name] is a [size] business in [industry]. Our [product / internal
system] currently runs on [existing stack, or: an agency-built codebase we no
longer have good access to]. We are hiring our first in-house back end developer
to take ownership of it. Read that literally: there is no engineering team to
join, no existing code review culture, and no ticket queue waiting for you. You
will build all three.
We are writing this plainly because the wrong hire here is expensive for both
sides. If you want a large team and deep specialization, this is not that job.
If you want end-to-end ownership and a direct line to the person who decides,
it is a good one.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Back End Developer owns our server-side systems end to end: the data model,
the APIs, the integrations, the deployments, and the decisions about all four.
You will also be the person who explains technical tradeoffs to a non-technical
owner in plain language.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Take ownership of the existing codebase and document what is actually there
•Build and maintain server-side features in [language and framework]
•Own the database: schema, migrations, backups, and restore testing
•Own deployment and hosting on [cloud provider or current host]
•Integrate the systems we already pay for: [list them honestly]
•Set up basic monitoring and alerting so failures are found before customers
report them
•Establish version control, environments, and a release process if we lack one
•Translate business requests into technical scope, and push back when the scope
does not fit the budget
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•[Number] years building and operating back end systems without a large team
•Comfort inheriting someone else's code and improving it incrementally
•Practical database and deployment skills, not just feature development
•Ability to explain technical decisions to a non-technical owner
•Judgment about what a small business should build versus buy
WHAT WE PROVIDE
•Direct access to the decision maker and a short path to shipping
•[Budget for tooling and hosting], [learning budget]
•Written scope and priorities, reviewed [weekly / monthly]
•[Flexible schedule / remote work / hybrid arrangement]
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
A full-time developer whose primary duty is building software is generally
exempt under the FLSA computer employee exemption at $684 per week on a salary
or fee basis, or $27.63 per hour. Two cautions for small businesses. First,
paying someone as a 1099 contractor while setting their hours, tools, and
methods is misclassification, and hiring your first developer is the most common
moment for it. Second, confirm your state threshold and duties test, which may
be stricter than federal. This is general information, not legal advice.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, ACCESS, AND CONTINUITY
Employment is contingent on signing our confidentiality and invention assignment
agreement. All credentials, domains, repositories, and cloud accounts are owned
by [Company Name] and registered under company accounts, not personal ones. The
developer documents architecture and access so the business is never dependent
on one person's memory.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [benefits summary]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a note on a system
you owned by yourself.
Template 6: Contract / Fractional Back End Developer
For project work with a defined scope, acceptance criteria, and an end date, plus the classification note that decides whether you have a contractor or an employee. Read our guide to hiring a contractor before you sign anything.
Contract / Fractional Back End Developer Job Description
CONTRACT / FRACTIONAL BACK END DEVELOPER SCOPE AND JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State] / Remote)
Engagement: [Fixed scope project / retainer of ___ hours per month]
Term: [Start date] to [end date or milestone]
Worker status: Independent contractor (read the classification note first)
Rate: $_ per [hour / project milestone]
ABOUT THIS ENGAGEMENT
[Company Name] needs back end work delivered on a defined scope: [describe the
project in two sentences]. This is a contract engagement, not a role on the
team. The deliverables, acceptance criteria, and end date are written below
because a contract without them turns into an open-ended relationship that
neither side can price.
SCOPE OF WORK
•[Deliverable 1: what exists at the end, not what activity happens]
•[Deliverable 2]
•[Deliverable 3]
•Documentation for everything delivered, in our repository
•Handover session with [named person] before the final milestone is paid
ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA
•Code merged to [branch] and deployed to [environment]
•Automated tests passing, with [coverage or scope expectation]
•[Performance target: p95 latency, throughput, or similar]
•Documentation reviewed and accepted by [named person]
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Demonstrated delivery of comparable scope in [language and framework]
•References from [number] prior engagements of similar size
•Own equipment, own tools, own business insurance where applicable
•Availability of [hours] per week through [end date]
CLASSIFICATION NOTE (READ THIS BEFORE YOU SIGN ANYTHING)
Calling someone a contractor does not make them one. Under the FLSA, worker
status turns on the economic reality of the relationship: control over the work,
opportunity for profit or loss, investment by each side, permanence, skill and
initiative, and how integral the work is to your business. The IRS applies its
own behavioral, financial, and relationship control factors, and several states
apply a stricter ABC test in which a worker performing services within your
usual course of business is an employee by default.
Practical rule: if you set the hours, direct the method, supply the tools, and
the engagement has no end date, you have an employee. Contract back end
developers are legitimate when the scope is defined, the contractor controls how
the work gets done, and the relationship ends when the deliverable does. This is
general information, not legal advice.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
The contract must assign all deliverables to [Company Name] in writing. Absent a
written assignment, a contractor generally retains copyright in the code they
write, which is the single most expensive omission in small business software
contracts. Address open source components and any pre-existing contractor
libraries explicitly.
HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
Send a proposal to __ with your rate, your timeline against
the milestones above, and two references.
Overtime, Exemptions, and the Contractor Question
Most back end developers are exempt from overtime under the FLSA computer employee exemption, but the exemption is conditional on both duties and pay. It requires a qualifying primary duty and compensation of at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at least $27.63 per hour.
Those terms come from the federal regulation on computer employees, which lists the qualifying duties as systems analysis and the design, development, documentation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs. The Department of Labor sets out the same tests in its fact sheet on computer-related occupations and states plainly that job titles never determine exempt status. The 2024 rule that would have raised the salary threshold was vacated in federal court and formally rescinded in May 2026, so the $684 figure stands.
The computer employee exemption has its own pay floor
Most back end developers are exempt from overtime, but not automatically. The federal computer employee exemption requires a qualifying primary duty (systems analysis, or the design, development, documentation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs) and pay of at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at least $27.63 per hour. The hourly option is unusual: it is the one exemption that survives hourly pay. The 2024 rule that would have raised the salary threshold was vacated in federal court and formally rescinded in May 2026, so $684 per week is the figure that applies. Several states set a higher threshold or a stricter duties test, and state law controls where it is more protective. This is general information, not legal advice.
Title alone never establishes the exemption
The Department of Labor is explicit that job titles do not determine exempt status, and it draws a line inside technical work: employees whose work merely depends on computers, or who mainly install, configure, and support systems others built, are not exempt under the computer employee exemption. That matters for two common small business hires. A person whose day is help desk support, hardware setup, and account provisioning is usually non-exempt even with a developer title on the offer letter. So is a junior hire paid below the weekly floor while doing real development work. Classify on the duties you can describe in a sentence and on the pay you actually run, then track hours for anyone non-exempt from the first week rather than reconstructing them later.
The contractor shortcut is the expensive one
Hiring the first back end developer is the single most common moment a small business misclassifies a worker. Under the FLSA the test is economic reality: control over the work, opportunity for profit or loss, relative investment, permanence of the relationship, skill and initiative, and how integral the work is to the business. The IRS applies behavioral, financial, and relationship control factors, and several states apply an ABC test under which anyone performing services within your usual course of business is presumed to be an employee. A developer who works your hours, on your systems, with no defined end date is an employee whatever the invoice says. Genuine contract work exists, but it has a written scope, acceptance criteria, and a date it ends. Getting this wrong means back taxes, back overtime, penalties, and interest.
Put IP assignment and account ownership in writing before day one
Code written by an employee within the scope of employment generally belongs to the employer, but code written by a contractor generally does not unless a signed agreement assigns it. That gap is the most expensive omission in small business software contracts, and it surfaces at the worst possible moment: a funding round, an acquisition, or a dispute. Sign a confidentiality and invention assignment agreement before the first commit, ask senior candidates to list open source projects they maintain so you can carve them out in writing, and register every domain, repository, cloud account, and third-party service under a company account rather than a personal one. Document access and architecture as a deliverable, not a favor, so the business is never one resignation away from being locked out of its own systems.
Anyone outside the exemption needs hours tracked and overtime paid past forty in a week. If you are unsure which side a role falls on, our breakdown of exempt versus non-exempt classification works through the tests in order. Note that FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider.
Requirements That Actually Filter
A requirement earns its place if a qualified candidate could fail it. Most back end postings are stuffed with lines that filter nothing: a degree requirement in a field where portfolios carry more signal, or a technology list so long that nobody clears it honestly.
The table below separates the requirements worth stating from the ones that only shrink your pool. The rule of thumb is that anything a competent engineer could learn in a month belongs in nice-to-have, and anything that takes a year of production experience belongs in required.
Requirement
Filters or noise
How to write it
Years of production experience
Filters
State the number and the word production, because side projects do not teach operations
Specific language and framework
Filters
Name both exactly; this is the single highest-signal line in the posting
Database design and query tuning
Filters
Name the database and the scale, not just the word SQL
Computer science degree
Mostly noise
Drop it or mark it as one path among several, or lose self-taught senior candidates
Long list of cloud services
Mostly noise
Name the two or three you actually run and move the rest to nice-to-have
API design experience
Filters
Say whether the API is public, partner-facing, or internal, because they are different jobs
On-call participation
Filters
Describe the rotation and the expectation, or delete the line entirely
Legacy code ownership
Filters
If the job involves inheriting a codebase, say so; hiding it costs you the hire in month three
One more requirement belongs on every posting and rarely appears: a signed confidentiality and invention assignment agreement as a condition of employment. Stating it up front is not legal decoration, it is a filter that surfaces candidates with open source commitments or side businesses early enough to handle in writing.
What to Pay a Back End Developer
There is no separate federal occupation for back end developers, so benchmark against the nearest classifications and adjust from there. The two closest are software developers and web developers, and the gap between them is wide enough that picking the right anchor matters more than any local adjustment.
National Medians: $92,650 to $139,500 Depending on the Anchor
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), median annual wages were $135,980 for software developers (10th percentile $82,460, 90th percentile $214,670) and $92,650 for web developers (10th percentile $48,100, 90th percentile $162,290). Database administrators had a median of $104,620 and database architects $139,500 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS national estimates).
Roles where the database is the main responsibility
Database architects (15-1243)
$139,500
$86,240 to $204,000
Senior data modeling and warehouse design
Network and systems administrators (15-1244)
$99,130
$62,640 to $155,050
Infrastructure-leaning roles with limited development
Demand supports those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers to grow 15 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average across all occupations, with about 129,200 openings projected each year. Publish a good-faith range rather than hiding it, and read our guide to salary benchmarking before you set one.
Companies Using FirstHR Onboard 3x Faster
Join hundreds of small businesses who transformed their new hire experience.
Split the evaluation into what you can judge and what you cannot, then borrow judgment for the rest. A non-technical founder can assess communication, ownership history, and how a candidate explains a past decision in plain language, which is a real job requirement at a small company.
What a non-technical founder cannot assess is code quality or system design, and guessing at it produces expensive hires. Bring in a trusted engineer from your network, a fractional technical leader, or a paid reviewer for one work-sample conversation and one system design discussion. Two hours of borrowed expertise beats any keyword checklist.
Unpaid Take-Home Projects Cost You the Best Candidates
A multi-day unpaid exercise selects for candidates with the most free time, not the most skill, and senior engineers routinely decline them. Keep any exercise under two hours, pay for it, and make it resemble the actual job rather than a puzzle. Better still, ask the candidate to walk you through a system they already built: what it did, what broke, and what they changed afterward. That conversation separates people who have operated production systems from people who have only written code, and it costs nobody a weekend.
Adjacent roles get their own postings. The Python developer and Java developer templates cover language-specific hires where the stack is the whole point of the search.
If the work is mostly pipelines, warehousing, and moving data between systems, a back end posting will describe it badly and attract the wrong shortlist. Use the data engineer templates instead, and pay to that benchmark rather than the software developer one.
Hiring a Back End Developer Without an HR Department
Small company engineering hiring fails in three predictable places: nobody on the hiring side can evaluate the work, the salary competition is unwinnable, and the first hire arrives before anything is set up to receive them. Each one has a fix that costs process rather than money.
Nobody on the hiring side can evaluate the work
At a small company the person writing the back end developer posting is usually the founder or the operations lead, and neither writes code. The result is a requirements list copied from a much larger company: fifteen technologies, a computer science degree, and five years in a framework that has existed for three. Strong candidates read that and assume you do not know what you need. The fix is to describe the system instead of the resume. Name the language, the framework, the database, and the cloud you actually run. Say what the developer will own in the first quarter. Then borrow judgment for the technical evaluation: a trusted engineer in your network, a fractional CTO, or a paid short review of the candidate's work sample will tell you more in two hours than a keyword checklist ever will.
You are competing on salary against companies that will always outbid you
National medians for software developers sit high, and large technology employers pay well above them with equity and bonus structures a small business cannot match. Trying to win on base salary alone is a losing plan. Compete on the things that are genuinely scarce: end-to-end ownership of a real system, a short path from decision to production, no committee between the developer and the customer, flexible or remote work, and a stack they get to choose rather than inherit from a platform team. Publish a real range instead of hiding it, because a hidden range reads as a low one. Then move fast. Small companies routinely lose good engineers by taking four weeks to decide what a competitor decides in five days.
The first engineering hire arrives and nothing is set up to receive them
A back end developer starting at a company with no engineering team needs more setup than a typical hire, not less: repository access, cloud accounts, environment credentials, a signed confidentiality and invention assignment agreement, security and data handling training, an equipment handover with a written record, and a documented ramp plan for the first month. At a small business that list usually lives in someone's head and half of it gets done in week three. FirstHR was built for this. The onboarding wizard runs the same sequence every time, e-signature handles the invention assignment and policy acknowledgments, document management stores the signed agreements against the employee profile, training modules cover security and data handling before system access is granted, and task workflows assign the account provisioning to the right person with a due date. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Once the offer is signed, the work shifts to a repeatable onboarding checklist, and for engineers working remotely our guide to onboarding remote developers covers the sequence from access provisioning through the first shipped change.
Key Takeaways
Name your exact stack (language, framework, database, cloud) in the opening lines, because back end candidates self-select on that single detail before reading anything else.
Define the ownership boundary explicitly: application code only, or deployment, database, and on-call too. Vagueness reads as a company that has not decided.
The FLSA computer employee exemption requires a qualifying primary duty plus at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis or $27.63 per hour, so a junior paid below that floor is non-exempt.
Titles never establish exempt status, and workers who mainly install, configure, or support systems others built do not qualify for the computer employee exemption.
Benchmark pay to the right anchor: BLS OEWS (May 2025) medians run $92,650 for web developers, $100,390 for computer programmers, and $135,980 for software developers.
Get a confidentiality and invention assignment agreement signed before the first commit, and register every repository, domain, and cloud account under a company account rather than a personal one.
A developer cannot start work until access exists, and access should never come before the paperwork. FirstHR runs the same onboarding sequence every time, with e-signature for the invention assignment agreement, document storage against the employee profile, security training assigned before system access is granted, and provisioning tasks routed to an owner with a due date. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a back end developer job description include?
A back end developer job description should include eight things: your actual stack named exactly (language, framework, database, cloud), what the system does and roughly how big it is, the ownership boundaries of the role (services, data model, deployment, on-call), the responsibilities in concrete terms, required versus nice-to-have qualifications kept honestly separate, the FLSA classification, the confidentiality and invention assignment requirement, and a real salary range. The stack matters more than any other line, because a back end developer’s skills are specific and candidates self-select on it in the first ten seconds. The second most useful line is ownership: engineers want to know what they get to decide, not only what they get to build. Add an equal opportunity statement, describe your interview process stage by stage, and name a real person to apply to.
Are back end developers exempt from overtime?
Usually yes, but not automatically. The FLSA computer employee exemption requires both a qualifying primary duty and a minimum pay level: at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at least $27.63 per hour. The qualifying duties are systems analysis, or the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs. A back end developer building services and data models fits that description. The exemption is unusual in that it survives hourly pay, which matters for part-time and contract-adjacent arrangements. Two limits are worth knowing. Employees whose work merely depends on computers, or who mainly install, configure, and support systems others built, do not qualify. And a junior developer paid below the weekly floor is non-exempt regardless of duties, so track hours and pay overtime past 40 in a week. Several states set higher thresholds. This is general information, not legal advice.
How much does a back end developer make?
There is no separate federal occupation for back end developers, so benchmark against the nearest classifications. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), software developers had a national median annual wage of $135,980, with the 10th percentile at $82,460 and the 90th at $214,670, while web developers had a median of $92,650, with a range from $48,100 to $162,290. Database administrators sat at a median of $104,620 and database architects at $139,500. Most back end roles at product companies benchmark to software developers, while back end work at agencies, marketing shops, and website-driven businesses tends to sit nearer the web developer band. Adjust for your metro area, the seniority you are actually buying, and whether you are offering equity. Publish a good-faith range where pay transparency rules apply.
What is the difference between a back end developer and a full stack developer?
A back end developer owns server-side systems only: APIs, business logic, the data model, background jobs, and integrations. A full stack developer owns those plus the user interface a customer actually sees. The practical difference for an employer is depth versus breadth. A back end specialist will design a data model that survives three years of growth and tune the queries that keep it fast, which is what you want when the system is complex and the interface is simple. A full stack hire will ship a whole feature alone, which is what you want when the product is small and the team is smaller. Small businesses hiring their first engineer usually need full stack coverage, then hire a back end specialist second, once the data and integration load outgrows what a generalist can hold.
Should I hire a back end developer as an employee or a contractor?
Hire an employee when the work is ongoing, when you direct how and when it gets done, and when the work is central to your business. Hire a contractor when you have a defined project with deliverables, acceptance criteria, and an end date, and when the contractor controls the method. Under the FLSA the test is economic reality: control, opportunity for profit or loss, relative investment, permanence, skill and initiative, and how integral the work is to your business. The IRS applies behavioral, financial, and relationship control factors, and several states use an ABC test under which anyone performing services within your usual course of business is presumed to be an employee. Getting this wrong means back taxes, back overtime, penalties, and interest. Whichever route you choose, get intellectual property assigned in writing, because absent a signed assignment a contractor generally keeps the copyright in the code they wrote.
How do I evaluate a back end developer if I am not technical?
Split the evaluation into the parts you can judge and the parts you cannot, then borrow judgment for the second half. You can assess communication, ownership history, and how a candidate explains a past technical decision to a non-technical listener, which is a genuine job skill in a small company. You cannot assess code quality or system design, and pretending otherwise produces expensive hires. Bring in a trusted engineer from your network, a fractional CTO, or a paid technical reviewer for a work sample discussion and a system design conversation. Use a short, paid, scoped exercise rather than a multi-day unpaid project, which strong candidates decline. Ask every candidate to walk through a system they built, what broke, and what they changed afterward. The answers separate people who have operated production systems from people who have only written code.
What does onboarding look like for a first engineering hire?
It needs more structure than a typical hire, not less, because a developer cannot start work until access exists. Plan for repository and cloud account access, environment credentials, a signed confidentiality and invention assignment agreement, security and data handling training before system access is granted, an equipment handover with a written record, and a documented plan for the first 30 days with something shipped in it. At a small business that checklist usually lives in one person's head and parts of it slip into week three, which wastes the most expensive month you will pay for. Run it as a repeatable sequence instead: e-signature for the agreements, stored documents against the employee profile, training assigned before access, and provisioning tasks with owners and due dates. FirstHR handles that sequence. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
