Front-end on a team
A front-end developer is typically only one player on a team that designs and develops web sites, web applications, or native applications running on web technologies. (Note: A developer who builds everything was once called a "web master" but as of late these rare and mythical developers are called "full-stack developers").
A bare bones team for building professional sites or software on the web will minimally contain the following roles.
- Visual Designer (i.e. fonts, colors, spacing, emotion, visuals concepts & themes)
- UI/Interaction Designer/Information Architect (i.e. wireframes, specifying all user interactions and UI functionality, structuring information)
- Front-end Developer (i.e. writes code that runs in client/on device)
- Back-end Developer (i.e. writes code that runs on server)
The roles are ordered according to overlapping skills. A front-end developer will typically have a good handle on UI/Interaction design as well as back-end development. It is not uncommon for team members to fill more than one role by taking on the responsibilities of an over-lapping role.
It is assumed that the team is being directed by a project lead of some sorts (i.e. stakeholder, project manager, product owner etc...)
A larger team might include the following roles not shown above:
- Visual Designers
- Interface Design/Interaction Designer/Information Design
- SEO strategist
- Front-end Developer
- DevOps Engineers
- Back-end Developer
- API Developer
- Database Administrator
- QA Engineer / Testers