Hire top Full Stack developers to grow your startup

A guide to hiring full stack developers for your startup in 2023

Our tips on how to get connected to talented full stack developers, what skills to look for, and the process of setting up an interview cycle.

Are you interested in hiring a full stack developer for your startup?

Wellfound data shows full stack developers are the most common engineering role startups hire for. With various projects and smaller teams, a more “generalist” role like a full stack developer is often one of the best places to start. While full stack developers may not specialize in one specific type of engineering, their versatility gives them the ability to move projects forward faster, troubleshoot issues, and provide input at various levels.

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How to identify a full stack developer for your startup

What skills should you look for when hiring a full stack developer?

Hire full stack developers with experience related to your codebase.

‍Search for candidates with knowledge and experience in the same technologies as your startup’s current codebase. Prioritizing skill matches in these technologies is important, but depending on the language, it can limit the pool you’re recruiting from. In these cases, it’s helpful to expand your search to those with experience in relevant technologies. Depending on a candidate’s level of experience, determine if you need a senior software engineer or other resources on the team to help train the hired candidate in a new language.Examples of relevant full stack developer experience:‍

• Back end programming languages: Ruby on Rails, Python, C++, Java
• Front-end programming languages: Javascript
• Frameworks including Angular, React.js, and Vue.js

Determine the right level of experience

‍“When you’re hiring your first engineer, my greatest piece of advice is to hire someone who you think has the potential to become a tech lead or senior engineer. They don’t need to necessarily be qualified for that role to begin with, but it will be essential in the long term.” - Wellfound Engineering

When hiring for generalist roles such as full stack developers, it’s often beneficial to hire someone with tech lead experience or who can (and is willing to) fill gaps as needed. Rather than worrying about if they’re more skilled in frontend or backend development, your ideal candidate is someone you can trust to be adaptable, thrive in an ambiguous environment, and be a self-starter.

On the other hand, if your team has strong management and tech leads in place, it can be helpful to hire based on what the team needs. For example, if you have 4 full-stack engineers who are more specialized in backend development, you may consider hiring a full stack developer with strong frontend experience. If you’re hiring for junior engineer, have a senior engineer in place to train newer engineers.

Find full stack developers with “founder-like” curiosity

‍At startups, hire candidates who have a founder-like curiosity. These are the type of employees who are always questioning ways they could make the product better. They’re in tune with the company’s strategy and want to be a part of the conversation. When they find an issue or an opportunity, they’ll proactively voice it or tackle it on their own. While not every employee needs to have a “founder-like” mentality, having folks like this on the team can be especially impactful on smaller teams.

So how can you identify this type of talent?

Look for a candidate who is aligned with the product you’re creating. They should be someone who likes to take ownership; they come up with ideas of their own and want to see them through.

Consider past experiences, such as corporate vs. startups

‍When it comes to hiring at a startup, one of the biggest differentiators of a candidate’s experience could be their experience (or lack thereof) at other startups as a full stack developer. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: working at a corporation vs. a startup presents starkly different challenges.

Large companies often have structures and resourcing which many startups may not have: multiple PMs, frameworks to follow, various engineering teams and specialties, multiple levels of management, etc. Evaluating your current company setup can help you understand how important this is. If the candidate only has corporate experience, you’ll want to assess how you think they could adapt to startup culture or vice versa.

‍When looking at past experiences for a full stack developer to hire, also consider the following:‍

• Do they have experience in a relevant industry or type of product?
• Have they worked on similar-sized engineering teams?
• Have they had leadership experience in the past?
• How junior are they? Will they require a lot of support?

Hire for “culture” fit at your startup

One of the most common topics regarding hiring is around “culture” fit. When it comes to startups especially, every new employee impacts the culture of the company. But what does it mean for a candidate to be a good culture fit for the company?

When hiring full stack developers, assess the setup of your startup and team and identify what kind of soft skills would be complementary. If you have a large team of engineers, the ability to collaborate could be crucial. Can they pair program successfully? Can they work with cross-functional partners well? If your company is remote, can they work across multiple time zones? Do they work well in remote cultures? Understanding what types of soft skills complement your company and team’s culture will help immensely in the hiring process.

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The most popular full stack frameworks

When looking to hire a backend engineer, the most common codebases are Ruby on Rails, Nodejs, and Java. For frontend engineering roles, it’s Javascript, with React.js and Angular frameworks. A full stack developer will have experience in both frontend and backend programming languages.

When hiring for an engineer, look for a skill match. Search on Wellfound for the specific coding language you are interested in hiring for, but also in certain instances be open to coding languages similar to the ones your startup uses. Best practices would also be to include the codebase you’re looking to hire for in your job posting for visibility to the candidate.

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How to find startup-ready full stack developers

Tailor your full stack developer job description to attract the right talent

Companies can always post a job and review applicants on Wellfound for free. When posting a job, it’s important to write a job description to will attract the right talent.

• Fill out all templated fields, such as title, location, skills, and more. These fields are what will help your job post show up in the candidate’s job searches. We send jobs to relevant candidates based on the information you share here, so filling out as much information as possible will help inform who we surface your job posting to.
• Write a job description accurately describing your company, the role, and the ideal candidate. In your job post, you’ll have a free-form section to explain the opportunity. We suggest the following template:

1. Your company
2. Role you’re hiring for
3. What responsibilities the role will have
4. What languages the codebase is in
5. Qualifications and requirements for full stack developers
6. Ideal and preferred skills or experiences full stack developers at your startup

• Get your company profile ready. Our data shows a candidate will usually first click on their company profile to learn more when evaluating a company’s job post. Make sure your company profile is filled out and up to date — candidates rely on this to inform their job search!

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Source and hire full stack developers on Wellfound

On Wellfound, you can also find candidates by sourcing for them — meaning, instead of posting a job and waiting for candidates to apply, you can find potential candidates and pitch your opportunity directly to them.

The majority of candidates on Wellfound are specifically interested in joining a startup. With Source, we’ll tell you key information including which candidates are actively looking for a job, what skills they have, their ideal salary, and more.

When sourcing for full stack developers on Wellfound, we suggest starting your search with the following:

• Role: Start your search by filtering for those with a current or previous “full stack engineer” title. Depending on your needs, you could also include “software engineer” to widen your search. This will filter for candidates with matching titles.
• Skills: From there, you’ll want to add specific languages and technologies you’re looking for experience in. Your search will depend on what technologies your codebase is in.
• Location: Filter for candidates in a specific location or based on remote preferences (whether they’re only open to remote, only open to in-office, or both). If you’re looking for remote developers, you can also search for remote candidates in specific time zones.
• Experience: This is where you can clarify the level of experience you’re looking for. If you’re open to multiple levels, you can always leave this filter open to allow a wider range of candidates to show up.

From there, you’ll see different lists appear based on whether they are passive candidates (open to interviews, but not actively looking), active candidates (actively looking and ready to interview), or curated candidates (ready to interview and have been vetted and recommended by our team).

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Find talent through full stack developer communities, networks, and meetups

One other way of connecting with full stack developers — especially within the startup community — is through different communities or events. Here’s a list of a few full stack communities you can get in touch with to connect with talented full stack developers:

Events

• Developer Conferences
• Javascript Conference
• Grace Hopper Conference
• Angular Events
• Vue Conference

Communities

• GitHub Community
• Stack Overflow
• DEV Community

Discord Channels

• Programmer’s Hangout
• SpeakJS

• JavaScript Mastery
• The Coding Den
• Python

Hackathons

• Devpost
• HackerEarth

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How to set up a hiring process for full stack developers:

Create a hiring funnel

• Initial Screening: For your first screen with a candidate, check for culture fit. Look out for a candidate’s enthusiasm, interest, and excitement in the product and company. Scan for if the candidate has experience working in the codebase or similar/relevant technologies for the role. When hiring engineers for startups, it’s essential to screen for if a candidate showcases the ability to work in a startup environment.
• Hiring Manager Call: If your company has a recruiter, they’ll often do the initial screening before moving a candidate onto the hiring manager call. If your company does not have a recruiter, the initial screening and hiring manager call will often be merged into one long call. In the hiring manager call, they’re evaluating similar things, but with more depth. Hiring managers should press further into past experiences, interests, motivations, and type of work style. At this point, they should also be evaluating the “culture fit” component and whether the candidate seems like they have the type of soft skills that are needed in the role.
• Technical Interview: You’ll want to include a technical portion to evaluate their expertise live with every technical interview. There are multiple ways to test a candidate’s coding abilities — most commonly, companies will include either a coding test or a project-based exercise.

1. For coding tests, common platforms for startups include TopCoder and CoderPad. It’s worth noting coding assessments such as these are becoming more and more outdated, as they can often be limited to only certain styles of work.
2. Project-based exercises, on the other hand, are becoming more and more common. For full stack developers, that typically comes in the form of a live architecture exercise for the candidate to solve for in GitHub during the interview. You’ll want to adapt your technical interview to the type of expertise you’re looking for in the role — for example, if you’re looking for a full stack developer with a strong backend background, you may want to center the questions more around databases and architect backend tables. During this portion, the most important thing to evaluate is how the candidate solves problems, if they’re asking the right question, and if they’re making the right observations, rather than if they got the right answer (though that’s very telling as well!).

‍Hiring your first engineer? Read our blog post for more information on how to hire your first engineer in 5 steps.‍

Full stack developer general interview questions

• Give an example of a project you have worked on and the technologies involved. How did you make these choices?
• Tell me about a time you worked in a pair programming setting.
• What are your strongest programming skills?
• What is one contribution you've made in your past role that had a lasting impact on the organization?

Full stack developer salaries

Determine a competitive salary you can offer candidates by comparing market data. Take a look at levels.fyi, a popular tool among engineer candidates to see the ranges of salaries in the market. You can also leverage Welllfound's salary tool to see how your offer stacks up against other jobs on our platform.

If you can’t meet a competitive salary and still want to hire top engineering talent, double down on the benefits with the offer. Is there equity or other compensation you can provide? Are there unique company benefits? Walk candidates through the additional benefits beyond salary during the negotiation phase.

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Hire full stack developers from around the world

We’ve reviewed how to determine the type of full stack engineer to hire, how to find full stack developers for your team, and how to set up your hiring process — now you’re ready to start looking 👀 Post your job on Wellfound and start sourcing top full stack developers from around the world today.