Doug Harper

What are the most important skills you need to land an iOS developer job? Over the last year, I’ve been making the switch from web developer to iOS and this question has been on my mind often. I’ve read articles, talked to developers, companies, recruiters, posted on forums, etc.. Here’s some of the important things that stick out in my mind.

Last year Dallas App Developers held a meetup - Leading DFW App Development Companies: A Panel Discussion. A main focus of discussion was about employment, and how to get hired. Oven Bits & Bottle Rocket both stressed character first, they are looking for quality people more than coding savants. The ability to fit in, learn and contribute to the team are the biggest attributes you can have. Everything else can be learned, to a certain degree. Here’s a quick example. Nearly every article written about essential skills mentions version control (Github), but these companies put little emphasis on it. Sure they use it, but it’s easily learned and they have their own protocols you’ll need to pick up anyway.

Required skills for Junior iOS Developer is difficult to nail down as every employer values various abilities, but there are a few things that keep popping up. Actually one post by David Grandinetti nearly covers it all, Orta Therox agrees.

I had a long list of specific things relating to Xcode and iOS. They were very tedious things like, “you should know how to add a new file to an Xcode project.” I’ve shortened that list to a general description here.

I expect you to be able to start a new project, write some code to download a bit of JSON via HTTP, and use the parsed JSON to present some data in a UITableView.

If you can do that, in a well organized manner, and can discuss the choices you made to get your app built you’ll have been able to do almost everything that was on that long and tedious list. — David Grandinetti

In addition to David’s list I’d include an understanding of Core Data, which is often overlooked, but mentioning frequently by people who’ve actively been through interviews. You’ll also need to know your way around Xcode, debugging too. And… nearly everyone mentions huge bonus points for building/distributing at least one app to the App Store.

The Vital Guide to iOS Interviewing is written for people/business looking to hire an iOS developer and it’s a popular article on sites like LinkedIn. You’re likely to see a few of these questions, so I’d suggest taking a look. The article is focused more towards expert level developers, but it covers some important fundamentals to consider as you’re learning. Another important point is that Obj-C is still very relevant.

since the frameworks for iOS development are by in large written in Objective-C, a basic knowledge of some Objective-C concepts are required to do iOS development and are therefore discussed in this guide. — Toptal

My final three skills are related to my first point, character. You should strive to write clean, well thought-out code. Swift is meant to be expressive, so make use of it. Attention to detail - that’s what makes for great apps and can seperate you from others. Passion, it might sound a little hokey, but if you don’t love it… why bother.