When you're hiring a developer, what should your main focus be? Is technical expertise enough on its own, or should soft skills take the lead? The truth is, the real question isn’t one or the other. It’s how to strike the right balance.
In most cases, the debate around soft skills vs. technical skills misses the point.
Successful hires usually bring a healthy mix of both, combining hands-on expertise with the ability to work well within a team.
Differentiating Soft and Technical Skills
Before moving on, a quick recap on soft and technical skills.
Soft skills are personal traits that shape how someone works with others—like communication, empathy, and adaptability.
Technical skills (also known as hard skills), on the other hand, are the job-specific abilities that let developers build, test, and maintain software.
Both play a key role in how well someone performs in a tech role, and together, they’re what turn a good hire into a great one.
Must-Have Technical Skills for an Engineering Team
These are the hard skills that help engineering teams build reliable, scalable, and secure products:
Programming Languages
Engineers should be fluent in at least one or two of the core languages used in your stack. JavaScript, Python, Java, TypeScript, and Go are common choices. Proficiency in these languages is the starting point for writing clean, maintainable code.
Cybersecurity
Understanding how to build secure systems is no longer optional. From basic encryption and secure authentication methods to identifying common vulnerabilities, engineers must be prepared to reduce security risks from day one.
Data analysis
Working with data, whether through SQL, Python libraries, or dashboards, is critical. Engineers who can extract insights from raw data play a big role in product development, performance tracking, and business decisions.
API Development and Integration
Strong engineering teams know how to build and connect systems. RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and webhooks are part of the everyday toolkit for making your app or platform scalable.
Cloud Platforms
Familiarity with AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure helps engineers manage infrastructure, automate deployments, and scale applications efficiently. It also opens the door to modern DevOps practices.
Testing Frameworks
Automated testing is key to building stable products. Experience with tools like Jest, Mocha, or Selenium shows that an engineer can ship code that’s been tested for edge cases, bugs, and performance.
Soft Skills That Set Great Developers Apart
These are some of the soft skills that make up a true problem-solver.
Communication
Expressing yourself in ways that others can understand, as well as being a great listener. Engineers need to share ideas clearly, explain technical concepts to non-technical people, and give constructive feedback.
Collaboration
Having the capacity to work with others, merging different perspectives toward a viable solution. Most technical challenges today require input from multiple roles, and a collaborative mindset keeps the process productive.
Creativity
Thinking outside of the box, critically analyzing solutions proposed by others, and matching those solutions with the original problem. It’s not just about writing code, it’s about solving the right problems in smarter ways.
Empathy
Understanding where others are coming from with their perspectives and focusing on getting to a middle ground instead of making others agree with your vision. This helps reduce friction in team dynamics and leads to better outcomes overall.
Time and Project Management
The ability to deal with deadlines, handle multiple tasks, and overcome obstacles by combining the available resources. Good engineers don’t just code, they plan, prioritize, and keep projects moving forward.
Soft Skills vs. Technical Skills: What Should You Prioritize When Hiring?
Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
The right mix of soft and technical skills depends heavily on your company’s culture and what each role actually demands.
Some teams are looking for engineers who thrive in fast-paced environments.
Others need developers who can stick to process, follow clear instructions, and deliver on time without improvising too much.
You might need someone deeply experienced in a specific language or framework, or someone who's curious enough to learn new tools on the go.
There’s no universal checklist: what matters most is finding a fit for your context.
Why Hiring From the Right Talent Pool Makes all the Difference
This is where access to a diverse and well-assessed candidate pool becomes essential. When you have a wide range of qualified professionals to choose from, you're not stuck trying to fit the wrong person into a critical role.
At Strider, we take this seriously. Our platform puts every candidate through a detailed assessment process so you only see those who match both your technical needs and your team dynamic. That’s how we help companies hire with confidence.
Skills You Should Never Skip When Hiring Devs
That said, after helping countless companies hire talented devs, we’ve seen a few skills consistently stand out, regardless of industry or project size.
- Willingness to learn: technology evolves fast. Developers who are open to learning will grow with your product and keep your systems up-to-date.
- Collaborative team players: especially in DevOps environments, engineers need to work closely across teams, share knowledge, and solve problems together.
- Great communicators: technical skills mean little if your team can’t understand each other. Clear communication is key for everything from writing code to reporting bugs.
- Experts in their preferred programming language: whether it’s JavaScript, Python, or Ruby, deep expertise in at least one language helps developers build faster and troubleshoot more efficiently.
- Software security fundamentals: understanding how to build secure systems from the start helps prevent vulnerabilities that could cost you down the line.
- Testing and debugging: clean code isn’t just about how it’s written, but also about how it’s tested. Engineers should know how to spot issues before they go live and fix them fast when they do.
Can You Teach Someone Soft Skills?
The short answer is yes, and your culture plays a big role in it.
Hard skills can usually be picked up through bootcamps or hands-on experience, and they’re easier to measure. Soft skills, on the other hand, are more nuanced and often harder to track or develop without the right environment.
However, soft skills aren't fixed traits. They can absolutely be developed, especially in a work environment that values feedback.
If your company culture prioritizes self-development and encourages people to invest in their own improvement, you're already on the right path.
Managers play a key role here too. When they lead by example and actively support their teams in building these skills, it creates a cycle of continuous learning across the board.
Using Feedback to Spot and Strengthen Soft Skills
Improving soft skills starts with recognizing where there's room to grow.
That’s why assessment is the first step. Implementing tools like 360-degree performance reviews can help surface valuable feedback, not just from supervisors, but also from peers and direct reports.
These insights give you a clear picture of which soft skills might be holding someone back or could use fine-tuning.
Building a Roadmap For Improvement
Once you’ve identified the skill gaps, it’s time to act. Creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP) gives each team member a structured way to work on their soft skills, with clear goals along the way.
Whether it’s communication, teamwork, or time management, employees should feel empowered to actively invest in their growth. Over time, this approach improves individual performance while still strengthening the entire team dynamic.
Now that the soft skills vs. technical skills debate is settled (with both sides coming out on top), it’s time to think about how you can level up your own hiring process. See how Strider helped Zamp find the right fit: check out their success story.
