Development Team Structure at ScienceSoft

• Plans the project and allocates resources based on the priorities established by the business analyst and product owner.
• Collaborates with the business analyst and product owner to define and manage the project scope, ensuring that all work required (and only the work required) is completed.
• Identifies and mitigates project risks.
• Coordinates tasks and communication between team members and stakeholders.
• Controls project milestones and deliverables and reports to stakeholders.
• Ensures the deliverables meet quality standards.
• Oversees change management.
• Manages the project budget and optimizes costs.

This role can also be performed by or shared between the product owner, business analyst, software architect, and team lead.

• Studies the business processes the software will support and elicits and documents software requirements.
• Works with software architects and developers to translate requirements into technical specifications.
• (for software products) Identifies the target audience, major competitors, and app features crucial for winning the target audience and building a working market strategy.
• Develops a business case for the project, including a feasibility study and cost and ROI estimations.
• Collaborates with the solution architect to assess the project’s technical feasibility and identify potential challenges.
• Creates training materials and conducts training sessions for end users.

This role can also be performed by or shared between the product owner, project manager, software architect, UX designer, and senior developer.

• Engages with stakeholders to understand their needs, expectations, and concerns.
• Defines and communicates the software vision and strategy to ensure alignment with business goals and stakeholder expectations.
• Creates, maintains, and prioritizes the backlog, ensuring it reflects the most valuable and relevant features and improvements for the software.
• Manages changes to the project scope or priorities, ensuring they are well-documented, communicated, and aligned with the overall software strategy.
• Prepares test cases for user acceptance testing (UAT), facilitates testing sessions, and gathers feedback.

   

  This role can also be performed by or shared between the business analyst, project manager, UX designer, and software architect.

• Designs the software architecture and integrations with other systems using detailed requirements provided by business analysts.
• Selects appropriate technologies for the solution.
• Ensures that the software architecture is designed to be scalable, reliable, high-performing, secure, maintainable, and portable.
• Collaborates with regulatory compliance advisors to ensure that chosen architectural decisions, tools, and services comply with regulations.
• Communicates to project managers any risks or dependencies related to architectural designs that could impact project delivery and their mitigation strategies.
• Provides technical guidance to development teams.

This role can also be performed by or shared between senior developers and tech leads, with DevOps engineers and security engineers involved for specific tasks if needed.

• Uses requirements provided by business analysts to create detailed user personas and user flows.
• Ensures that the UX design is inclusive and accessible in line with applicable standards (e.g., WCAG).
• Develops low-fidelity sketches or wireframes that show the basic UI layout. Presents wireframes to the product owner for feedback on their alignment with software vision and functionality.
• Builds interactive prototypes using tools like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD to simulate the user experience before development. Works with the product owner to validate that prototypes meet user needs and product goals.

• Conducts moderated and unmoderated usability testing sessions and performs A/B testing.

This role can also be performed by or shared between the UI designer, product owner, and front-end developer

• Takes wireframes and prototypes from UX designers and enhances them with detailed visual elements.
• Creates high-fidelity mockups that accurately represent the final product for stakeholder review and user testing.
• Develops the overall aesthetic of the software interface, ensuring it aligns with the brand identity and appeals to the target audience.
• Designs visual aspects of micro-interactions and animations (e.g., hover effects, loading spinners, button transitions).
• Ensures a consistent visual style across different platforms (web, mobile, desktop) and defines breakpoints for responsive design.
• Creates and maintains UI kits and design systems for quick development of new user interfaces.
• Works closely with UX designers to iterate on designs based on user feedback and testing results.

This role can also be performed by or shared between the UI designer and front-end developer.

• Writes server-side code based on the specifications designed by business analysts and software architects.
• Manages database interactions and data storage solutions.
• Creates and maintains APIs for integration with other systems and front-end components.
• Collaborates with front-end developers to ensure that server-side logic supports front-end requirements and data needs.
• Together with software architects and security engineers, plans and implements security measures to protect data and applications.

• Performs unit and integration tests.

• Fixes the defects found by the QA team.
• Documents the code, describes APIs and data flows, and maintains change logs and version control notes.

• Turns UI designs into functional interfaces. Provides feedback to UX and UI designers on design feasibility and suggests adjustments if necessary.
• Ensures cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility for different web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet) to ensure a consistent UX across all devices. Helps QA engineers define test cases for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

• Integrates the front end with back-end services and APIs.
• Performs unit and integration tests.
• Debugs front-end issues found by the QA team.

• Develops and maintains native and cross-platform mobile applications for iOS and Android devices, wearables, smart TVs, and more.
• Implements the user interface and user experience following the designs provided by UX and UI specialists.
• Ensures consistent user experience across different mobile devices and screen sizes.
• Ensures compliance with platform guidelines (e.g., Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines or Google’s Material Design).
• (for multi-platform projects) Integrates the mobile app with back-end services and APIs provided by back-end developers.
• Conducts unit and integration tests.
• Identifies and fixes bugs reported by the QA team.
• Maintains change logs and version control notes for future reference.

• Designs database schemas, considering cloud database capabilities (e.g., AWS RDS, Azure SQL Database) and leveraging cloud-native features like sharding and partitioning, if applicable.
• Collaborates with software architects to align schema design with architecture and coordinates with developers on data structures.
• Performs database maintenance tasks (such as backups, recovery, defragmentation, and replication) or configures these automated processes and monitors them in cloud-based databases with DevOps engineers.
• Manages database access controls and security measures.
• Plans and handles data migration tasks with software architects and developers.
• Ensures compliance with data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) in collaboration with regulatory advisors.

This role can also be performed by or shared between back-end developers, DevOps engineers, and system administrators.

• Sets up and maintains continuous integration and deployment pipelines (CI/CD), collaborating with back-end developers to ensure that builds and deployments are automated, tested, and aligned with application requirements.
• Manages server infrastructure and cloud services.
• Implements the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions.
• Optimizes containerization and orchestration.
• Implements application monitoring and logging solutions, identifying key metrics and logs with developers for actionable insights.
• Works together with security engineers to secure server infrastructure, implement security policies and access controls in cloud environments, and protect applications and data during deployment.
• Develops and maintains disaster recovery plans with software architects and database developers.

This role can also be performed by or shared between system administrators, back-end developers, and security engineers.

• Collaborates with development teams to establish and promote secure coding practices (e.g., CWE/SANS Top 25).
• Works with software architects and developers to integrate security into the software architecture, development environment, and SDLC processes.
• Performs security assessments, including penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and code reviews. Collaborates with development teams to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities promptly.
• Prepares for and responds to security incidents, coordinating response plans with DevOps engineers.
• Ensures software compliance with regulations such as ISO 27001, NIST, GDPR, or HIPAA.
• Utilizes security information and event management (SIEM) tools to monitor network traffic, system logs, and user activities for suspicious behavior.

This role can also be performed by or shared between senior developers, DevOps engineers, software architects, and system administrators.

• Creates test strategies and plans and designs test cases based on software requirements.
• Collaborates with DevOps engineers or system administrators to ensure the testing environment mirrors production, reducing false positives and negatives.
• Executes test cases, documents results, and communicates them to developers.
• Identifies bugs, documents reproduction steps, tracks progress, and validates fixes to ensure resolution.
• Discusses bug priorities and impacts with product owners or business analysts to align with business needs.
• Implements automated testing, working with developers to identify suitable areas and working with DevOps engineers to integrate tests into the CI/CD pipeline.

This role can also be performed by or shared between developers and DevOps engineers (partially).

• Configures and maintains servers for development, testing, and production environments. Often works with DevOps engineers to automate server provisioning and configuration using infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or Ansible.
• Manages network configurations, coordinating with security engineers to configure firewalls and VPNs.
• Installs, updates, and manages software dependencies on servers.
• Diagnoses and resolves system issues, working with developers to diagnose the root cause and implement code-level fixes.
• Collaborates with DevOps engineers to set up monitoring tools and dashboards for real-time performance data, enabling proactive resource management and sharing insights with developers to optimize application code and architecture.

This role can also be performed by or shared between developers and DevOps engineers.

• Provides technical support to software users and escalates complex technical issues to L2 engineers and developers.
• Logs user issues in a tracking system, documents detailed case history, and tracks resolution progress.
• Works with QA to verify whether reported issues are known bugs or new defects to determine whether an issue has already been addressed in a new patch or release.
• Updates project managers on the volume and types of issues in the backlog, which can influence project timelines and priorities.
• Gathers user feedback for software improvement and evolution.
• Maintains a knowledge base of common issues and solutions.

This role can also be performed by or shared between system administrators and customer service agents.

• Works closely with project managers and business analysts to determine which regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS) and voluntary standards (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2) are applicable.
• Develops a software compliance strategy.
• Collaborates with architects, designers, and developers at the software design stage to verify compliance of their decisions.
• Ensures compliance is maintained throughout the development project (if applicable).
• Gathers compliance documentation throughout the SDLC to support ongoing and future audits or reviews.
• Validates the software's compliance with all relevant standards before launch.
• Assists with regulatory submissions, such as FDA clearance for medical device software, ensuring all necessary documentation is prepared and submitted correctly.

   

  This role can also be performed by or shared between security engineers and business analysts.