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What began as an internal Facebook hackathon project but became one of the most popular frameworks on the planet? Yes, it’s React Native.
Immensely popular for its speed, easy-to-use UI, and efficiency, this mobile app development framework captures the loyalty of developers worldwide.
Does that make finding developers who can use the React Native framework easy? Maybe. However, if you want to hire the best React Native programmers, here are some tips and suggestions to remember — from where to find them, how to frame React Native job descriptions, how much React Native developers for hire cost, and more!
React Native Capabilities Continue to Grow
Faced with code maintenance problems, developers at Facebook released React.js to help manage Facebook Ads webpages. React.js launched as an open-source project in May 2013. In January 2015, React Native appeared on the scene as a webpage development framework. Since then, its user base and capabilities have continued to grow. For example, its redesign in late 2018 was designed to make the framework more flexible and enable easier integration with existing apps. These updates included changing the threading model and making the bridge simpler to make it more lightweight.
These changes are consistent with Facebook’s original vision for React Native: to reduce development costs and cycle times and support continuous improvements without slowing down the delivery of new features.
What Makes React Native So Popular?
React Native does only one thing: it builds mobile applications. Its value lies in reusing code to accelerate development, even if used in cross-platform development.
The UI building blocks that React Native uses are the same elements as those used in native applications for both iOS and Android. The only difference is, in React Native, developers assemble the components with JavaScript and React.
For many developers worldwide, React Native has become the go-to framework for developing Android and iOS apps. That’s because:
- Its UI is easy to navigate and offers a pleasant user experience.
- React Native apps are lightning-fast for all capabilities.
- iOS and Android apps built on React Native use fewer resources than native apps.
- React Native supports automated code updates, which enable faster release of new app features.
- General-purpose developers can create applications with little or no support from mobile app specialists.
React Native is cost-effective, and its apps deliver what managers want: faster development cycles, faster time to deployment, and excellent performance.
React Native Development Tools
When developers build React Native apps, they have a wide variety of IDEs, development tools, and design apps to choose from. When dedicated React Native developers use React Native to build cross-platform apps, they’ll use JavaScript and React, in addition to the following.
IDEs and Code Editors
Developers use these client-side tools in a web development environment to create efficient, secure web and mobile apps. Here’s a list of popular frameworks and code editors that skilled React Native developers use for software development:
- Atom is a highly customizable text editor. This software enables developers to add features with HTML and JavaScript and refine a UI’s look and feel with CSS/Less.
- Nuclide is an IDE built as a single package on top of Atom.
- Visual Studio Code is a powerful, lightweight source code editor for Windows, Linux, and OS X apps. Visual Studio Code is open source and comes with built-in JavaScript support.
Sublime Text is another popular editor developers use for code, markup, and prose.
Other Development Tools
React Native app developers rely on their toolkits to deliver clean and appealing apps. Here are five tools that make React Native coding, debugging, and testing more efficient:
React Native Tools is a Visual Studio code extension that provides a development environment for React Native projects.
- Reactotron is a tool that speeds up the oh-so-very-slow React Native debugging process.
- Reduxsauce is a tool that simplifies the often-complex process of creating actions and reducers.
- Expo is a set of React Native tools that help developers with the need for speed to build iOS and Android apps.
- Ignite CLI is a set of React Native tools. Developers use Ignite to generate boilerplate, Redux files, components, and styles.
Hiring the Best React Native Developers
To hire React Native app developers, you must have a clear idea of the skills and experience you need, know where to find the best candidates, and offer competitive pay rates.
Definitions of what you need from candidates in each position should appear in the job description and be reflected in the job title. To kick your hiring process off, you must create a React Native developer job description that’ll attract the right talent, especially senior React Native developers. If you’re not sure how to draft up a job description, you can find some React Native job description templates here.
React Native Developer: Technical Abilities
When evaluating a candidate, focus on the candidate’s technical know-how — the core knowledge, skills, and experience of React Native developers.
- Core concepts: JavaScript (e.g. components, properties, and states), React Native (components and the bridge concept), and an understanding of basic React assumptions. Here are some JavaScript interview questions and React.js interview questions to refer to.
- Core experience: Consider experience as a scenario where candidates use specific skills in specific work environments. Be sure to mention the level of expertise, work environment, resources, and expectations that come with the job.
And don’t forget to add other technical requirements that promote success. For example, “Turns around revisions quickly, communicates well, and writes clean code.”
Including a full range of required skills and experience in your job post will help you get the best-fit results, which we’ve covered in this post about crafting the best job description.
Finding Top React Native Developers
Finding experienced React Native developers shouldn’t be difficult, but hiring the very best ones will probably require thought and effort. Your success will depend on knowing where React Native developers hang out and the professional growth challenges they look for. Knowing this can eliminate a lot of the time and effort in your search.
React Native Communities
It’s easy to find React Native developer communities — just specify React Native, the framework or topic area of interest, and maybe your location in a browser search. Some of the biggest and most vibrant React Native communities include:
- /r/reactnative on Reddit.
- React Native training opportunities on Cruchbase, Slack, and Github.
- React Native on LinkedIn.
- React Native, GraphQL, React JS Developer Facebook groups, and more.
Hackathons, Conferences, and Events
These types of venues are well-known as developer hangouts, where you can find both React.js and React Native developers. Here are a few annual events in the U.S. and elsewhere:
- Reactathon Developer Conference in San Francisco, CA.
- Chain React Conference in Portland, OR.
- List of upcoming conferences.
React Native Developer Salary and Hourly Rates
Because the salary for a React Native developer varies widely throughout the U.S. when you start to hire dedicated React Native developers, it helps to know and offer pay rates that are appropriate for your location and knowledge domains.
In 2023, the average U.S. React Native developer salary is $126,270 per year. Entry-level positions start at about $102,194 annually, whereas the most experienced developers earn up to $162,500 annually. Average annual salaries for states with an IT hub include:
- California: $150,000
- Massachusetts: $140,000
- Missouri: $140,625
- New York: $140,000
- Texas: $130,000
- Washington: $125,000
Freelance React developers (we’ve taken this from our internal information on React.JS freelancers!) typically charge an average of $81 to $100 per hour, depending on the developer’s location and level of experience. If you use $90 per hour as an average rate, wages will be approximately $14,400 per month or $172,800 per annum.
Next Steps
To get the highest value from the time, effort, and cost of hiring React Native developers, follow these steps:
- Customize your job description by emphasizing the technical experience you are looking for. Describe the knowledge, skills (technical and soft), and experience that are most relevant for each task. And be sure to use each job description to present your organization as an enjoyable place to work.
- Engage in face-to-face and virtual events. React Native developers who participate at these venues are most likely to make high-quality networking connections.
- Keep your hiring budget in line with local developer salaries and hourly rates. Or, how about working with a remote freelance developer?