How to Hire Angular Developers: Going Down the Rabbit Hole
Tags: angular, webdev
Published: 2022-02-02 10:02:54

Before you hire Angular developers we would like to cover in a nutshell what the Angular framework is.

AngularJS is the first name of the framework. After the second version was released, it became usual to call it Angular or Angular 2+. Many changes were introduced when creating Angular 2 thus it is considered a new framework. One of the key differences is using the TypeScript language by default. After the redesign Angular became easier to master, application architecture became simpler and it is easier to read and write the code.

Application created with Angular include:

- Single Page Applications (SPA);
- Enterprise Web Applications;
- Mobile apps;
- Progressive Web Applications (PWA);
- Server-side rendered (SSR) apps;
- Interfaces with beautiful animations, and more.

For more information about Angular, see the [official documentation](https://angular.io/docs). 

The statistician’s data states that Angular is the third most used framework in the world.

![Most used web frameworks in 2020](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/k7fh8v05alx2vk4hkqxg.png)
<figcaption>Most used web frameworks in 2020</figcaption>

Whether you are an entrepreneur, project manager in a large company, or a CTO you know that the success of a project depends on the skill to find the best developers.

## Angular developers responsibilities
The core work of Angular developers is to create client (interface) applications. Responsibilities depend on product demands and most general of them include:

1. Frond-end building.
2. RESTful APIs Building.
3. Working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
4. Working with external APIs  and data sources.
5. Unit Testing.

---

## What are the essential skills to hire Angular developers
### Must-have technical skills for Angular developers
To hire Angular developers you should consider the required skills a developer should possess to fulfill duties. The list of major hard skills includes:

1. HTML, CSS, JS – basic web-development techniques.
2. TypeScript – recommended language to create Angular applications.
3. Version Control-GIT – distributed version control system and GitHub – online repository hosting service using Git.
4. Package managers (NPM for instance) – software that facilitates and speeds up application development.
5. Preprocessors – offer advanced facilities to simplify CSS code. They also contain a lot of capabilities that are not available in CSS. 
6. API RESTful interaction experience.

![Did you know, that](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pbrsc44cnejea7ohho6g.png)

Soft skills are required along with the technical skills and, though, not being directly linked with the domain area, determine how successful participation of a developer in the product development process is going to be. Generally, soft skills can be divided into three main groups which are:

1. Social skills (sociability, grammatically correct speech, emotional intelligence, etc).
2. Intellectual skills (creativity, learning capability, curiosity, etc.).
3. Leadership skills (responsibility, decision-making skills, people management skills, etc).

Soft skills are covered in more detail in our new article [Why Soft Skills Matter When Hiring a Software Developer](https://jaydevs.com/why-soft-skills-matter-when-hiring-a-software-developer/).

### Angular component libraries every mobile developer need to know
Many component libraries appeared over the last years. They assist in faster and more reliable web and application development without the necessity to reinvent the wheel every time. They provide libraries as ready-made solutions. So you do not have to create the same elements from scratch. 

There is a huge and active Angular community that is continuously working on the creation of libraries. Angular libraries cover the framework gaps and improve the usability of certain functions.  Below we will  present 7 frequently used component libraries for Angular that a developer should be familiar with:

1. [Angular Material](https://github.com/angular/components) – component library implementing Google’s material design. 
**Components:** Buttons, Navigation, Data tables, Pop-up creation such as snackbar and Dialog, Toolbar menu and Navigation bar, etc.
**Github Stars:** 21,000+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 905,000+
2. [NG Bootstrap](https://github.com/ng-bootstrap/ng-bootstrap) – a library that offers bootstrap 4 components and replaces Angular UI-bootstrap.
**Components:** Tooltip, Datepicker, Popover, Typehead, etc.
**Github Stars:** 7,800+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 375,000+
3. [NGX-Bootstrap](https://github.com/valor-software/ngx-bootstrap) – a library that contains all Bootstrap components powered by Angular. 
**Components:** Alerts, Datepicker, Typehead, Carousel, etc. 
**Github Stars:** 5,300+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 244,000+
4. [Clarity](https://github.com/vmware/clarity) – an open-source design system that brings together UX guidelines, an HTML/CSS framework, Angular components, and Web Components. 
**Components:** Login page, Passwords, Toggle switches, Progress bars, Alerts, Radio buttons, etc.
**Github Stars:** 6,300+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 16,500+
5. [NG-ZORRO](https://github.com/NG-ZORRO/ng-zorro-antd) – components aim to provide an enterprise-class UI based on Ant Design.
**Components:** Buttons, Icons, Typography, Grid, Divider, etc.
**Github Stars:** 7,700+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 33,700+
6. [Onsen UI](https://github.com/OnsenUI) – an open-source collection of UI components for HTML5 hybrid mobile app development. 
**Components:** Side Menu, Tabs, Lists and forms, Stack Navigation, Automatic Styling, etc.
**Github Stars:** 8,400+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 17,000+
7. [NG Semantic UI](https://github.com/vladotesanovic/ngSemantic) – a library that is built on Angular 2 and Semantic UI which is one the most popular and used UI components in the market. 
**Components:** List, Menu, Segment, Select, Button, Rating, Message, etc. 
**Github Stars:** 1,000+
**Weekly npm downloads:** 500+ 

You can find more components on Github [here](https://github.com/PatrickJS/awesome-angular) and [here](https://github.com/brillout/awesome-angular-components). Compare your project to the component libraries that a future developer should know. If you don’t quite understand what library components a developer should know ask your CTO to assist you. 

---

## How to interview Angular developers
When you hire Angular developers you should assess the level of the developer’s experience. Previous experience can include the number of projects implemented by a developer, technologies he had practical experience with, etc. 

Depending on the experience and seniority level, developers can be divided into three levels: Junior, Middle, and Senior. To learn more about each level, the difference between them, and cases when you need a certain level refer to our article [5 Software Developer Levels: Whom to Choose](https://jaydevs.com/software-developer-levels/).

An interview is a common practice to assess the skills and knowledge of a developer. Traditionally a candidate is interviewed in two steps.  In the first step, theoretical knowledge is tested. In the second step a coding part is performed, where a developer resolves some algorithmic tasks.  

Depending on the seniority level of the required developer, questions for the theoretical part are divided into three levels.

### Junior Angular interview questions
**Q1.** What are components and what are they required for? 
**А1.** In Angular one component contains other components resulting in a structure resembling a tree consisting of building blocks enabling user interface creation. Components in Angular can be treated as basic building blocks the whole user interface is made of. Every component has its own intent inside an application. For instance, a blog feed is one component, read post is another component. Components are motion-sensitive and respond to user actions including click, open, minimize, maximize, etc.  

**Q2.** What are the required parameters for the @Component decorator (what are the essential elements it can’t exist without)?
**A2.** Template or TemplateUrl. A component should necessarily have a template. At the same time, for instance, such a parameter as a selector is not required as when we test some directives in integration tests we can create various host components that don’t contain selectors. 

**Q3.** What is the difference between a component and a module? 
**A3.** Components control HTML itself and visualization. Modules consist of one or several components and serve to determine what is in the application. 

A module is a kind of a box containing all the parts of the application, while components are building blocks containing the functional elements of the same application. 

**Q4.** What is the difference between ngIf and [hidden]
**A4.**

- The ngIf directive completely removes an element from the tree. 
- The [hidden] directive only disguises the element. 

### Middle Angular interview questions
**Q1.** What is Protractor?
**A1.** It is a framework required for end-to-end testing. The Protractor is a Node.js program built on webdriver.js. The main objective is to run tests in the real browser and user behavior demonstration (clicks, etc.) 

**Q2.** How should parameters be passed in Pipe?
**A2.** In templates, we can pass the parameters through the pipe using a colon. Further, we can use a colon to pass any number of parameters accepted by a given file. 

**Q3.** What is the difference between @Component and @Directive
**A3.** Directives assign behavior pattern (color, size, styles, etc.) however at the same time they don’t create own functionality and structure for the application. Whey work within the component and the component in its turn creates the structure where template behavior can be assigned by means of a directive. 

**Q4.** What are the types of binding in Angular?
**A4.** There are three types:

- **1 type.** Binding from a component to a template:
`[innerHTML]` – attributes (attribute binding works through using square brackets)
`{{ title }}` – interpolation (passing certain values to a template and one way binding of a component to a template correspondingly).
- **2 type.** Reverse binding from a template to a component:
(mouse down) – events (any event present in JS can be assigned to elements in HTML, enclose in parentheses and thus understand that this is also a one-way binding coming from a template to a component. 
- **3 type.** A full finding of a data model and a template:
`[(email)]` – two-way binding (Any changes in data model result in template changes. Any change in a template leads to data model change. In this case, a syntax combination of attribute binding and event binding is used).

![Did you know](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5woml5gg5tzcshriqpwm.png)

### Senior Angular interview questions
**Q1.** How does change detection work? How can we change the change detection strategy?
**A1.** For the change detection strategy, the OnPush value should be set for specific components. It will force Angular to start change detection in these and included components only when new links are passed to them rather than when only data is altered.

**Q2.** How does lazy loading work in Angular?
**A2.** Lazy loading – is an approach in Angular that enables loading JavaScript asynchronously when a certain route is activated. It improves application load speed due to the splitting of an application into several bundles. When a user moves around the application, the bundles are loaded on demand.

**Q3.** What is dependency injection and how is it used in Angular?
**A3.** Dependencies are services or objects that classes require to fulfill their functions. Dependency injection or DI is a design pattern in which a class requests dependencies from external sources but doesn’t create them.
@Injectable() decorator defines that Angular can use this class in DI.

### Coding challenge
The good news is that there are plenty of websites with coding tasks for certain seniority levels and specialization of candidates. The bad news is that a correctly fulfilled task is not enough to definitely decide in favor of a certain developer. However, the list will become much shorter.

Read our [Top 8 Best Coding Interview Platforms](https://jaydevs.com/top-coding-interview-platforms/) to better know what coding tasks are, why they are important for interviews, and sources where you can find a challenging task for your candidates. 

---

## How much does it cost to hire Angular developers
Rates of Angular developers vary depending on project complexity.

The experience of a developer is another factor affecting the hourly rates. The more experience, the higher the price. Rates for junior developers can range from 15 to 50 USD/hour, middle developers – 30-80 USD/hour, and 40-130 USD/hour for seniors.

Below you can check the average annual salary of Angular developers depending on seniority level and region on the globe. We referred to data from Payscale to compose this spreadsheet.

![Worldwide annual salaries of Angular developers](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ua7r1lzdqsesj8lp6wwj.png)
<figcaption>Worldwide annual salaries of Angular developers</figcaption>

More information about rates of developers is presented in the [How Much Does It Cost to Hire an App Developer in 2021](https://jaydevs.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-app-developer/) article.

## Conclusion
Hiring an Angular is critical for a project’s success. Don’t try to hire the ideal developer, search for a person appropriate to certain needs of your project. Hiring the wrong candidate can result in a waste of time and money.

You have covered the main steps in hiring an Angular developer: responsibilities, skills, the right approach to interviews, and rates of developers.