Is Golang the Future?

What is Go Lang?

Golang, also known as Go or Go language, is a programming language developed by Google, highly regarded for it’s simplicity, and efficiency.

Why is it growing in popularity so rapidly?

1.    Scalability: As companies focus on building distributed and scalable applications, the demand for Go developers has sky-rocketed. 
2.    Speed: Go code doesn’t need to go through a virtual machine, it can be directly complied from the binary file. It’s also a much simpler language than others, making compilation time much faster.
3.    Support: there is a growing, active community as more and more developers see the opportunities of being skilled in the programme. This has lead to a strong network, libraries and tools to support. 
4.    Cloud-native development: as an increasing number of businesses move to the cloud and are developing applications to reside on the cloud from the get-go, Go is being adopted to build and develop these applications and services due to it’s strong performance and efficiency. 
5.    Web development: it is designed for the internet, meaning for web developers they can build complex websites without having to tap into third party libraries. 

Demand for skills:

As Go is being adopted across a wide range of industries – at pace – demand for developers with Go skills is increasing. Professionals proficient in Go are a real asset to any business looking to develop backend, cloud services, infrastructure and more. 

In the contract market, Inside IR35, we can see Senior positions receiving £650 - £750 and Lead/Principal roles at £750 - £850. Outside IR35, Senior positions are ranging between £550 - £650, and Lead/Principal £650 - £750. In our most recent salary data report, we can see salaries are just as lucrative in the perm market:

•    Lead Software Engineer (Golang) – up to £120,000 in London and up to £90,000 across the rest of the UK.
•    Principal Software Engineer (Golang) – up to £110,000 in London and up to £85,000 across the rest of the UK. 
•    Senior Software Engineer (Golang) – up to £120,000 in London and up to £75,000 across the rest of the UK

Rob, Associate Director at Fruition IT says: ‘We have seen a rise in demand for Golang (Go) engineers which is largely down to the language's efficiency, simplicity, and strong support for concurrency. This has made it a preferred choice for scalable and high-performance applications across various organisations from global banks to start-up/scale-ups. Although the demand for Go is high, we have also noticed clients’ expectations and standards are is also very high. My advice to anyone looking for a new position at any level is to do your homework around the clients coding principles and best practices and prepare to align yourself. This will make you “talk their language” and put yourself in the best possible position to be successful.’

Top job: Senior Software Engineer (Go) – Fully remote! 

Fruition are working with a market leading, highly respected brand to recruit for an accomplished Backend Engineer with strong Go development experience. The Backend Engineer will be tasked with developing and improving products that make a difference to customers, working alongside Product Managers, User Researchers, UX Designers, and other Software Engineers.

As a Backend Engineer, you will be a vital part of a forward-thinking fintech company, driving the development of cutting-edge mobile and web applications, utilising a product focused approach in a highly collaborative environment.

For more details and to apply for this role click here.