Fully functional interactive dashboards are an integral part of most software applications, and skilled dashboard developers are in high demand. Other companies will try to attract the best talent, so you need to stand out from your competition.
Depending on the type of software project you are building, you may need multiple dashboards. For instance, customers using a shopping app expect to view their purchase history, account information and other relevant details through a dashboard. On the back end, businesses use various dashboards for analytics, tracking performance of all business aspects, actionable insights to facilitate real-time decision-making, and many other business intelligence needs.
Companies generate incredible amounts of data, and dashboards provide visualizations that make data easier to understand. Dashboard development evolves constantly as new technologies, market trends, ways to utilize data, and business requirements come into play.
There are three main categories of software dashboards:
- Analytical: Identify trends to empower data-driven business decisions
- Operational: Monitor daily business activities
- Strategic: Provide high-level, long-term, enterprise-wide business insights
- Tactical: Track performance
Each type of dashboard has unique requirements and goals, and your dashboard development team needs various skill sets to meet them.
To produce high-caliber dashboards that provide meaningful, accurate results, you must use developers with extensive experience in a wide range of programming and data management areas. Check out our other hiring guides to learn more about each relevant skill.
Do you know how to hire dashboard developers? This hiring guide provides invaluable details about sourcing and hiring the right dashboard developer.
By using the information and top sites in this hiring guide, you can build a team of skilled developers to design dashboards that benefit your business.
This table gives examples of the kinds of functions each type of dashboard can facilitate.
| Analytical Dashboards | Operational Dashboards | Strategic Dashboards | Tactical Dashboards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer satisfaction | Customer service performance | Customers | Employee metrics |
| Financial performance | Logistics | Finances | Energy management |
| HR diversity | Overall efficiency | IT | Inventory management |
| Marketing performance | Production | KPIs | Marketing strategies |
| Supply chain | Social media automation | Marketing | Quality assurance |
Hiring a Freelance Dashboard Developer
You have many hiring options, including part-time or full-time employees, remote workers, and freelance dashboard developers. Utilizing freelancers or remote developers has many measurable benefits:
- Specialized skill sets are often difficult to find locally, but they are usually easier to find in freelance and remote talent pools.
- Contract hiring provides more flexibility without long-term commitments.
- Fees are typically less, and you won’t have to pay associated payroll taxes, overhead costs, or benefits.
Many freelancers are more qualified than local developers.
What Does a Dashboard Developer Do?
Dashboard developers aren’t traditional programmers because they don’t usually write code. Instead, they work with programmers and experts from various fields to create dashboards that meet specific goals.
Dashboards are effective ways to communicate with strategic people within organizations. Each person sees the same information presented in the same way. The dashboard development process involves answering questions such as:
- What problem or issue do you want to address?
- Who will use the dashboard and what user interface is best?
- Which category of dashboard meets your needs best?
- What KPIs are necessary?
- What level of analytics and summary will you need?
Every dashboard should display pertinent data in logical, visually appealing layouts. Dashboard information should include context to explain the numbers, highlighting actionable insights, business impacts, and recommendations.
“The purpose of a dashboard is not to share data/KPIs/segments/blah/blah. The purpose of a dashboard is to drive a discussion about actions the business should take.”
— Avinash Kaushik , Chief Strategy Officer, Croud
Why hire dashboard developers? Having vast quantities of data doesn’t do you any good unless you utilize it, and dashboards are ideal tools to make your data work for you.
The right dashboard developer understands your business and goals, stays on top of current trends, knows how to communicate the right kinds of data visually, realizes what functionalities users will require, and has experience with dashboard-building software. When you implement well-designed dashboards, your company can reap multiple benefits:
- Customer behavior analysis, which contributes to choosing product offerings and marketing methods
- Improved operational efficiency
- Data-driven insights to align your strategies with tactical procedures
- Money savings due to identifying inefficiencies
- Tailored solutions to achieve specific goals
Although many companies have similar needs, the exact goals you wish to accomplish by implementing various dashboards are unique. When you hire dedicated dashboard developers, they can customize your dashboards to satisfy your needs.
Dashboard developers may have multiple duties, including:
- Creating technical specifications that achieve your business objectives
- Designing, building, implementing, and maintaining dashboard business intelligence tools
- Preparing and cleansing data and creating data models for dashboards
- Working with businesses and coders to understand their needs and developing appropriate dashboard solutions
- Recommending specific strategies and tools
Many companies choose to hire developers with experience working on similar projects or in the same industry. Some hiring sites on our list can help you identify these candidates.
Before you begin searching for dashboard developers for hire, you should first define your project and thoroughly understand the qualifications these professionals need. Then use the top sites in this guide to identify and hire the best candidates.
How To Hire Dashboard Developers
Any hiring process should begin by identifying goals and defining your project. Include details such as:
- Project nature and scope
- Timeframe and project longevity
- Budget and projected return on investment
- Number of team members to hire and hiring methods
- Desired and required role-based qualifications and job description
Do you need an individual developer to update existing dashboards, or do you need a dedicated team to build new ones? Will you hire employees, remote workers, a dashboard development company, or freelance dashboard developers?
Today’s technology provides many ways for team members to collaborate effectively, whether they are across the room or across the world. Freelance and remote developers often outperform employees. If you’re unsure, use a site like Toptal that gives you a no-risk trial period to evaluate a developer’s performance before making a long-term commitment.
You will find dashboard developers for hire with varying skill levels. All should possess the same basic core skill sets, but those with higher skill levels typically have more years of experience. Senior-level developers usually have project management experience as well. Team structures often require junior- and mid-level developers to perform routine tasks, but they might also possess niche skills or extraordinary insights that could make them a better choice than higher-level candidates. Look beyond labels to the person behind them.
The higher the skill level, the more you will likely pay to hire the developer. Your budget may limit the dashboard developers you can add to your team, so focus on skill sets and the quality of past work.
Many employers aren’t qualified to assess developers' technical skills. Toptal and many of the other sites on our list offer pre-vetted candidates, allowing you to bypass this step. These sites can also suggest the skill sets you need based on your project description.
What Skills To Look for When Hiring Dashboard Developers
Your dashboard project might be general or specific in nature. Your goals may include:
- Improving customer service
- Managing individual departments within your organization
- Analyzing costs, financial performance, and marketing strategies
- Tracking production, sales, and customer trends
Your developer will select the type of dashboard that will best meet your goals.
Some of the technical skills your dashboard development team should possess include:
- Experience using Tableau , Power BI , Google Analytics , Adobe Creative Cloud, or other dashboard development platforms and tools
- KPI applications
- Data analysis and visualization, spreadsheets, and statistical modeling
- Understanding and applying various metrics
- The ability to understand your business processes and the types of data that are useful for your purposes
Your team should be able to gather, interpret, process, and coordinate data cohesively, presenting it in ways viewers can easily comprehend.
Developers should also have various soft skills to perform their jobs well. These include:
- Creative thinking and problem-solving skills, and attention to detail
- Active listening, verbal, and written communication proficiencies in your preferred language
- Time management, flexibility, prioritization, and the ability to perform well under pressure
- Interpersonal skills that facilitate teamwork, collaboration, and a cohesive work environment
- Cultural fit
Your team may consist of several individuals, so building a skilled team that works well together is vital. Some sourcing sites offer developer teams used to working together, while others consider crucial teamwork-related soft skills when matching talent to your project requirements.
Utilizing freelancers allows you to evaluate each developer’s performance and overall fit, replacing team members when necessary.
How Much Does It Cost To Hire Dashboard Developers?
The average salary for U.S. dashboard developers is $115,715 yearly or $56 per hour. Annual earnings range from $79,500 to $131,000, depending on skill sets and levels, location, and project requirements. Hiring freelancers often costs less without compromising the quality of your deliverables.
Tips for Writing a Dashboard Developer Job Description
The high demand for dashboard developers means you must create a compelling job description that makes your offer stand out. Point out company culture, goals, brand, and achievements. Include relevant role-based details, such as:
- Qualifications
- Job duties and weekly work hours required
- Project description, including timelines
- Hiring method (employee or freelance)
Even if you use sites like Toptal that pre-vet candidate technical skills, you can still require specific skill assessments as part of the application process. Comparing the results impartially can highlight the best developers for various positions.
Common Interview Questions To Ask When You Are Looking To Hire a Dashboard Developer
To obtain fair interview results that reflect inclusivity and diversity, compile a list of consistent interview questions and a scoring model you will use for each applicant. All the candidates you interview should have the required technical skills, but you can still ask a few questions, such as:
- What makes a good dashboard for data analytics and business intelligence?
- What kind of dashboard do you suggest for my project, and why?
- What are the similarities and differences between Tableau, Google Analytics, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Power BI?
Questions like these help you to gauge the depth of the candidates’ knowledge and their comfort levels discussing various technologies and their applications.
Interviews are your chance to evaluate soft skills. Design questions to elicit responses that should demonstrate these capabilities.
Pose an open-ended situational question, purposefully leaving out some vital details. The candidate should ask for the missing information before providing a solution. This can show the applicant’s:
- Attention to detail
- Critical thinking and problem-solving prowess
- Confidence level
- Communication skills
- Approach to handling work challenges
The insights you gain from how each applicant handles their responses are arguably as important as their actual answers.
How To Find Freelance Dashboard Developers for Hire
You can find dashboard developers in many ways, using professional networking, recruitment agencies, freelance marketplaces, and job boards. Each is viable, so how can you choose which method to use? Think about:
- Pricing
- Hiring speed and options
- Skill sets available
- Standards for screening and vetting
- Services provided and how much work remains for you
Choose the best sites to hire dashboard developers based on how well they meet your needs.
You can’t expect high-quality dashboards and the invaluable business intelligence they provide unless you hire top-notch dashboard developers. Create and implement a sound hiring strategy using the information and top sites in this hiring guide.
Hiring Dashboard Developers - FAQs
- How To Hire Dashboard Developers
Using this guide, create your hiring strategy:
- Define your project’s goals.
- Decide if you’ll hire employees, remote workers, or freelance dashboard developers.
- Create an appealing job description.
- Compare the hiring sites in this guide and choose which to use.
- Search for applicants and vet them if necessary.
- Interview shortlisted candidates and select your new team members.
If you need to hire top dashboard developers quickly, we recommend using Toptal.
- How Much Does It Cost To Hire a Dashboard Developer?
You can hire dashboard developers using various pricing structures, which include hourly or project-based fixed costs, employee salaries, and pre-packaged services. The amount you pay to hire developers is based on multiple factors, including:
- Skill sets and levels
- Project complexity and timeframes
- Location
- Hiring method
The total cost for hiring an employee includes wages, payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead expenses. You can avoid these additional costs by hiring freelancers.
- Where Can I Hire Dashboard Developers?
- Toptal, Arc.dev, Revelo, Guru, and Turing are excellent resources for hiring dashboard developers. Explore the other sites in this guide for more options.
- Why Should You Hire a Dashboard Developer?
Data-driven business decisions tend to have better outcomes than even the best guesses. This kind of decision-making creates better engagements with customers and employees, improves operational efficiency, and can increase your bottom line.
Many companies acquire data that they never utilize, meaning they miss opportunities for improvement and growth. Dashboards provide meaningful methods of data utilization that can facilitate positive change.
A skilled developer can use their knowledge of data, analytics, statistics, and development platforms to design, build, implement, and maintain dashboards tailored to meet your unique business goals.
- Are Dashboard Developers in Demand?
According to Infinity Business Insights, the business dashboard market should increase by a 18.7% CAGR between 2023 and 2030. The growing adoption rate of data-driven decision-making for businesses is behind this projected expansion. The already high demand for competent dashboard developers should increase accordingly.