Key Takeaways
A strong backend ensures app performance, scalability, and security, handling databases, APIs, and cloud integrations.
Backend developer salaries vary significantly by region, with outsourcing destinations like Ukraine offering substantial cost savings.
Hiring in-house developers offers control but comes with higher costs and long-term commitments.
If you outsource backend developers, you can reduce expenses and provide quick access to skilled teams.
Who wouldn’t want their future web app to become the next Stripe, Preply, or Grammarly? But as a CEO, you know that an idea — no matter how great — is nothing without finding the right people to implement your web app.
As a company that has helped startups grow into unicorns, Acropolium has personally felt the talent shortage. While developing apps for healthcare, HoReCa, fintech, oil and gas, transportation, construction, and many other fields, we helped our clients hire the backend developers for strong, result-oriented teams.
In this article, we’ll be walking you through the intricacies of hiring experienced backend engineers. Keep reading to learn how to choose a backend developer that has an optimal skill set, compare the cost of hiring backend developers in various regions across the globe. Discover the benefits and potential challenges of backend development outsourcing, and learn the best approaches to overcome these challenges.
What is backend development?
Backend development is about much more than just making an app work behind the scenes. It plays a huge role in scalability, performance, and how well an app integrates with cloud services.
The backend handles databases, connects different parts of the app, and makes sure everything runs smoothly. Plus, it’s responsible for keeping user data safe through encryption, authentication, and authorization — all crucial for security.
That’s a lot to manage, which means you need to hire backend developers with a pretty broad skill set.
What skills do backend developers need?
A backend software engineer must demonstrate an impressive command of many programming languages and frameworks, along with other hard and soft skills. Here’s an outline:
Server-side programming (Python/Django/Flask, Ruby/Rails, Go, Java, .NET, PHP, JavaScript, etc.)
SQL/NoSQL server and database management (MongoDB, Redis, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.)
API development
Microservices and multi-tenant architectures
Serverless computing
Niche-specific libraries
Web security best practices
Data encryption, identity verification, and safe API design
Experience in BaaS and FaaS projects
Since backend development is so complex, hiring the right people — let alone building an entire in-house team — can be tough. That’s why many companies choose to outsource to experienced tech providers, making sure they get skilled professionals without the hassle of hiring from scratch.
Some even opt for BaaS or Backend-as-a-Service, a notion we will be covering later.
Hiring in-house vs. outsourcing to a dedicated team
There are two main ways to handle backend development: building an in-house team or outsourcing to an external provider.
Building a software development team in-house improves knowledge continuity, simplifies team management and project progress tracking. However, this comes at the cost of paying bigger salaries, paying recruitment and HR costs, paying for insurance, retirement plans, vacation, sick leave, and other expenses.
Most importantly, you will have to keep the in-house team on the payroll even when the backend is mostly built, and their services are not much needed anymore. Otherwise, you will have to disband the team and repeat all the work from scratch should you need any product backend adjustments in the future.
Building a software development team in-house is a great option for:
Large businesses that already have a clear vision of their needs.
Companies looking to hire mobile backend developers as full-time employees.
Organizations that frequently need backend developers and struggle with hiring shortages.
On the other hand, reducing costs is the main reason why companies outsource backend development. Instant access to a dedicated team is another benefit, as you don’t waste time looking for talents — instead, they start providing value from day one.
For many companies, outsourcing backend development is the smarter move. It works best for:
Small businesses with limited budgets.
Startups that need a cost-effective way to develop their product.
Large enterprises that prefer to outsource backend work rather than expand their in-house teams.
Yes, you have to invest a bit more effort in remote team management and issue tracking, but when you work with a trustworthy software vendor, they take care of these things by default. Plus, you pay only for the services provided, and once the project is over, you part ways without hard feelings and can work together again when necessary.
Speaking of payment, let’s see why the cost of hiring software engineers of the same seniority level varies in multiple regions worldwide.
How much does it cost to hire a backend developer?
An experienced Python, Go, Ruby, or any other backend developer will demand at least $115,000+ in the US, according to Glassdoor. The lump-sum spent on each employee monthly can be up to 30% higher, due to additional compensations. Hiring such a talent in the EU will cost about 30% less, and backend development outsourcing to Ukraine will help save about 70% of these expenses.
Of course, the difference in salaries stems from the difference in the cost of living in various places. Even in the same countries, the numbers can differ because, obviously, living in a capital city is more expensive.
We’ve compiled the numbers from public sources like Glassdoor, Indeed, Jooble, and other job portals to illustrate the contrast in payments. All the sums are medians, so you can encounter higher or lower salary expectations, but these numbers are good representations.
| Country | US | The Netherlands | Germany | Ukraine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend developer salary (yearly) | $115k+ | $60k+ | $76k+ | $44k+ |
Other factors affecting the paycheck are the seniority level and the tech stack the developer knows how to work with. So, while these medians provide a pretty straightforward representation, the actual salary will vary in each individual case. Naturally, professionals able to work with more technologies, libraries, and frameworks will cost more.
Eastern Europe in general, and Ukraine in particular, are some of the most popular outsourcing destinations. The lower cost of living there, favorable taxation, and good technological background thanks to a strong education system, allowed Ukraine to become an IT hub.
More than 100 global corporations, like Google, Snap, ABBYY and Oracle, have their R&D centers in Ukraine.
When you hire dedicated backend developers offshore, the benefits include not having to meddle in team composition, social benefits, compensation, office expenses, and more.
But outsourcing to Ukraine adds the benefits of geographical proximity to the EU, working hours overlapping with the US and EU, simplified taxation for IT specialists, and instant access to more than 340,000 experts in various software development domains. This makes Ukraine one of the best places to find backend developers for long-term cooperation.
BaaS as an alternative: potential challenges
There is also one alternative we haven’t discussed: going for the BaaS or Backend-as-a-Service approach, where you don’t even have to hire backend engineers. Instead of building the backend from scratch, you subscribe to remote access to cloud-based preconfigured common backend functions and save your time and money.
The BaaS market is set for massive growth, jumping from $31.35 billion in 2025 to an estimated $100.23 billion by 2034. This model isn’t your conventional approach to web app development, so if the idea of outsourcing still sounds more appealing than BaaS, we get you. Just don’t forget to really consider the use cases and challenges of backend development outsourcing before you dive in.
Risk of data leaks. Backend is the backbone of a web architecture, so if a security flaw is not discovered and fixed before the release, hackers can use API connections to breach the data of your app. This means that when looking for a backend developer team, you must choose one trustworthy enough to admit their failures and correct them quickly.
Knowledge transfer. The end of a dedicated team’s work on your project must not mean a loss of knowledge of the system’s inner workings. Experienced backend engineers should provide in-depth documentation and guides on all backend module configurations to ease the transition of knowledge.
Unclear delivery expectations. The more careful you are when considering and refining project requirements, the better the chances of receiving high-quality deliverables on time.
Lack of flexibility. Once the technology stack is selected, adjusting it mid-project is nigh impossible. This calls for a more in-depth discovery stage and selecting the best fit for your needs.
Language and cultural barriers. The team you choose must follow the same business code as you, i.e., be a cultural fit. This includes a good command of English to ensure there is no miscommunication.
Time zone differences. Most likely, your dedicated team of backend engineers will live in a different timezone and work while you sleep. This means you’ll need to put more effort into building effective communication and task tracking to ensure tasks are done overnight.
Solutions to backend outsourcing problems
While the challenges above might seem intimidating, with sufficient forethought and preparation, you can overcome the challenges of backend development outsourcing:
Find a reliable contractor. Select the contractor based on their portfolio of successful projects, relevant domain expertise, and feedback from previous customers.
Outline the knowledge transfer process in advance. If you don’t plan on signing a long-term support contract with the backend development team that built your app, ensure they provide all the necessary developer documentation and product deployment guides so you can easily onboard a new team.
Prepare correct specifications. The best way to avoid costly mistakes when developing software is to devote sufficient time during the discovery phase. This allows analyzing all the project requirements in full and preparing concise, correct, and on-point specifications.
Choose the right tech stack. Ensure the tech stack used can deliver the expected results. Select not the shiniest new ones but the time-tested and proven libraries and frameworks the team has ample experience working with.
Test everything. The DevOps practices allow creating continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Build testing environments and run unit and integration tests after submitting every new batch of code to catch bugs earlier.
Set up communication between teams. While the backend is developed separately, it’s an integral part of the entire application, so it must interact with client-side modules seamlessly. This is possible only when frontend, backend, and QA teams cooperate. Track progress and address any issues as soon as they arise to minimize their impact.
Why invest in BaaS?
Let’s all agree that building a backend from scratch time and again is counterproductive. So why not use a cloud-based BaaS platform instead? It has the basic features most apps need preconfigured, and you can easily build your frontend on top of them.
Each web app you want to build needs its backend components: a database to store user data, APIs to interact with third-party tools and platforms, etc. And you will have to invest your team’s time and resources to build standard modules like these.
Instead, when you use a BaaS platform like Google APIs, AWS Amplify, or Firebase, you receive isolated data storage and a set of APIs to work with. This allows you to combine the existing blocks to build your business logic, form workflows, create new services, and much, much more.
Using this approach allows you to save on repetitive module development while building a wide range of software products, from websites and form builders to SaaS MVPs or full-scale products.
How to hire dedicated backend engineers
You now know the skills to look for in backend engineers, the challenges to expect when you engage in backend development outsourcing, and the ways to overcome these problems. And since finding the right partner can become a major part of success for your next project, we thought we’d throw our hat in the ring.
Acropolium is a reputable software engineering company with 21+ years of expertise in subscription-based products, serverless architecture, AI, and IoT. Delivering complex enterprise-grade solutions, we have lent our knowledge and provide experienced backend engineers for 23+ industries worldwide. Our teams are here to help you design, build, and deploy highly performant apps.
Now, let’s take a look at some of our success stories.
Cloud & IoT-based Health Monitoring System
A Swiss healthcare provider aimed to enhance chronic disease management by leveraging IoT technology.
Solution
Acropolium developed a scalable IoT health monitoring system to improve real-time tracking, predictive analytics, and workflow customization:
Real-time health tracking of vital signs using AWS IoT Core and wearable devices.
Predictive analytics.
A low-code platform featuring customizable dashboards and drag-and-drop workflow adjustments.
Scalable cloud infrastructure built on AWS for secure data handling.
Real-time alerts and analytics.
The platform was built using React for the interface, Node.js for the backend, PostgreSQL for reliable data storage, and Apache Kafka for efficient real-time data streaming.
Results
40% reduction in system update and customization time, allowing healthcare teams to focus more on patient care.
50% increase in patient monitoring capacity with no performance compromises.
Enhanced chronic disease management through real-time tracking and predictive analytics, leading to better patient outcomes.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the right backend development approach is key to balancing cost, flexibility, and long-term efficiency. While in-house teams offer control, outsourcing provides faster access to expertise and scalable solutions. Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) can further streamline development by leveraging pre-built cloud infrastructure.
To navigate these choices, a reliable partner makes all the difference. With decades of experience in backend architecture, Acropolium ensures secure solutions tailored to your needs.
Whether optimizing legacy infrastructure or building scalable multi-tenant solutions from scratch, our expertise helps businesses scale efficiently. Let’s discuss how we can support your project’s success and find the right talent from backend engineers to cloud developers.
Contact us today!
![ᐉ Acropolium is honored by [Clutch] as The Top B2B Company in The Czech Republic for 2021](/img/articles/top-b2b-companies-czech-republic-2021/img01.jpg)
