A complete guide on how to hire React Native developers

React Native became a groundbreaking solution for mobile app development back in 2015. Instead of writing code for every platform separately, it allowed engineers to utilize one codebase for different platforms.

If you're planning to build your mobile app and save money and time resources as well, you might want to hire React Native developer. We'll further discuss what hiring model to prefer, what to look for in an employee or a company providing outsourcing services, and how we found specialists for React Native app development.

Why hire a React Native app developer?

There are two main approaches to mobile app development in 2024. The first one is native development, which involves developing applications with languages specific to different operating systems: Swift and Objective-C for iOS, and Kotlin and Java for Android app development. On average, a native app developer charges more compared to a React Native developer.

The second approach involves using frameworks to develop cross-platform apps. They work from a single codebase and can be used to launch apps for both iOS and Android. One of the technologies used to build such apps is React Native, a framework invented by Facebook. Our team highly recommends using this approach and hiring a dedicated React Native developer instead of native developers for several reasons:

• Code reusability — with this framework, app developers write code once and deploy it in two operating systems at once. As far as there is a need to create only one codebase, only one development team is needed. This results in higher cost efficiency and fewer recruiting issues.
• Simple support — React Native application is easier to support than a native one since there is a need to maintain only one codebase. This was one of the reasons why the Facebook team invented the framework: They didn't want to support several codebases in different languages and implement the same app features with the help of different tools and technologies. React Native makes the lives of the Facebook tech team easier, while it also reduces the resources the app owner spends on app support.
• Hot reloading — React Native's hot reloading feature allows developers to see real-time updates in their app without needing to recompile the code and send the updated version to app stores again and again.
• Large development community — the overall React Native support is great. This technology has a large and active community of developers, providing a wealth of resources, libraries, and support to help developers build and maintain their mobile apps. The development community and Meta will keep supporting the framework due to its popularity. That's why the app created with it may not need refactoring too soon.

Top three methods to hire a React Native developer

There are several ways you can cooperate with React Native experts. Choose one depending on the resources you are ready to spend on your app and the amount of tech expertise you already possess.

In-house team

Finding the right fit for the project is a time-consuming campaign, but it is worth it when you are looking for a long-term solution. It's a tough path as there are pitfalls that seem subtle at first, but it's better to be aware of them before you start interviewing potential candidates.

Sometimes HR agencies anonymously post engineers' CVs on job websites. You may think you've found a perfect match, but suddenly it becomes more complicated. A disadvantage of hiring a React Native engineer with a third party involved is that you have to pay twice in the first months after hiring: one wage to your employee and one wage to the agency.

Actually, to deal with CVs and agencies, you'll need to hire an HR specialist first. If you're planning to build one mobile app for your business or an MVP for your startup, stepping on the long road of building your own team isn't worth it. It will require from you a deep immersion in HR processes, which will be time-consuming, and, as a result, cause expenses. There are other short-term and less-problematic possibilities: hiring freelancers or working with an outsourcing firm.

Freelance

This model suits those who want to hire React Native developer for a short period of time; it's a project-based contract. Once a freelancer builds an app for your business, your working relationship ends. You don't need an in-house engineer if you're planning to build just a single mobile app to test a business hypothesis.

What is the main pitfall here, apart from finding a developer independently? We would say it's maintenance. An outsourcing company or in-house employees take responsibility for what they've created, whereas the obligations of a freelance worker are not that strong, unless you propose signing a contract, which terms may not be accepted anyways. The riskiest aspect of unreliability is deadlines. Unfortunately, evidence shows that freelance workers tend to postpone and delay the results of work, often being involved in several projects at once.

In recent years, hiring either freelancers or in-house specialists gets even more difficult due to on-going IT talent shortage. One of the researches in this field was conducted in 2022. Within its wireframes, 350 CEOs, CTOs and other tech leaders were asked about key challenges that their businesses face. 34% answered that they find recruiting technologists and filling tech positions has been very challenging recently.

This is a significant issue that needs to be taken into account since with two above-mentioned methods, a startupper won't be able to start the development of the product right away, there will be a need to spend a lot of time an resources on finding skilled React Native developers and wait till they make up a strong team.

Outsourcing companies

You can trust the creation of your digital product to the proven contractors. They have teams that have already proven themselves on projects and have experience in software development, e.g. Ronas IT has built over 30 mobile apps just with React Native framework and over 400 projects in general.

We are sure our employees show great performance and deliver projects on time. Another advantage is that we support projects after the deployment. With companies like ours, you can always agree on the complexity and the price of the mobile app. We have always fit in the budget and deadlines set by our clients, implementing features in the way they wanted them to be. Thankfully, reviews prove that we stick to these values.

The pitfall here is that you may not always be in control of the internal process, but once you hire a good outsourcing company, they manage all processes for you. You get rid of the headache with management of the mobile app development progress and have time for scaling your idea and finding investors.

These were short intros of ways you can find tech specialists. In the following parts, we'll discuss how to choose an engineer or an outsourcing company for making your app. Should you prefer contract-based work or growing your own team, take a look at the skills we've listed below.

A required skill set for the role

These are criteria that you may focus on if you are planning to hire a React Native developer for the short or long term. Keep in mind that the characteristics are for the middle level, as companies usually prefer to hire specialists of this grade.

When vetting a new developer, examine both tech and soft skills. One guarantees users will enjoy the application, while another ensures you will get a good team player.

Hard skills

Not to say that basic knowledge of React Native elements such as APIs is not essential, but there are other important skills you should consider when hiring a React Native developer.

JavaScript programming. An obvious but crucial skill. Because the framework is built with the JavaScript programming language, solid knowledge of it is a requirement.

Experience with TypeScript. It is a super typed programming language that is a superset of JavaScript. Being familiar with it will be an advantage for the middle React Native developer, as TypeScript eliminates type errors programmers tend to make when using JavaScript.

React knowledge. React Native is built based on React.js library. A programmer should have a strong knowledge of React, not to mention its fundamental concepts such as JSX, components, props, states, and others.

Expo tools. Familiarity with Expo will be an extra plus. It is a set of tools that enhances React Native app development by making it easier and faster. Expo adds flexibility and opportunity to customize apps built with React Native framework.

Soft skills

Soft skills can be divided into three categories, describing a candidate's ability to work in a team, cope with tasks and deadlines, and willingness to learn. Of course, there are some personal features that can be accepted if an applicant is an outstanding specialist. Don't take this classification as the final say and feel free to adapt it if needed.

Communication. It implies not only being able to explain thoughts, but also being respectful and attentive to people of different identities. A React Native developer you're hiring needs this skill to communicate effectively with designers and a product team.

Resilience. An ability to overcome difficulties and go back to a normal state. It doesn't mean that an employee should be tolerant to anything out of the ordinary. It's more about willingness to adapt and not to be scared of deadlines.

Openness to new. A crucial soft skill for the coder. Mobile app development standards update very often, and checking on them allows you to be one step ahead of the competitors.

Finding a React Native developer corresponding to all of the above might be a tricky task. To avoid overwhelming search and the long vetting process, an easier way is to work with an outsourcing company with all the specialists ready to dive into your project from day one. Let's then have a look at how to choose the right outsourcing company.

How to choose an outsourcing company to get high-quality React Native development services

According to Statista, IT outsourcing has been growing steadily over the last few years after the pandemic and is expected to gain popularity in the next 4 years. Soon there's going to be no services without any sort of digital representation.

For example, most delivery services create their apps with the help of outsourcing software development companies, which helps them to save money on maintaining the infrastructure and earn more. And these are some of the points to keep in mind when choosing an outsourcing partner.

Initial contact. Even though most IT companies do email scripting professionally, the first encounter is important. See if the company you're contacting is willing to answer your questions, especially about costs. Pay attention if they are available and whether or not they delay responses — if they do, it may say a lot about their internal processes. For example, at Ronas IT, we always promise to reply within the next 24 hours no matter what and follow this rule in communication with coworkers.

Reviews. You see a beautifully designed website of a company and decide they are good at building interfaces. Well, that might be the case, but still, read the clients' feedback first. Such platforms like Clutch and Goodfirms might be of help.

Portfolio. Check a company's cases to assess it's React Native experience. Download apps to experience how the company handles the UI/UX. To appraise the design skills, check the firm's Dribbble and Behance. If you're suspicious about reviews you may try to reach out to other entrepreneurs to have a one-on-one chat about services.

Transparent communications. You should be aware of every step in a workflow. Normally, an IT outsourcing company keeps you updated with a demo every two weeks and sends short notes about small updates daily if needed. You can check our workflow as an example of what milestones you pass if you choose an outsourcing partner to make a digital product for you.

After-release maintenance. As stated in the first part of the article, this is an important service provided by outsourcing companies that guarantees you support in case there are bugs needed to be fixed, updates to release, or new features to implement. Always ask a company you're planning to work with about their policy in this field.

Price. Last but not the least comes the price of React Native app development! When searching for a development team, it's necessary to decide what price your business is ready to pay for mobile app development. The rates an outsourcing agency charges usually depend on its experience, location, complexity of the project, and technologies it works with.

One of the key factors affecting the price is the location of the agency. Luckily for us, since nowadays an entrepreneur can hire a team from any part of the world and choose rates that match the project budget. Take a brief look at the table provided by Clutch.

Should you be interested in building your app with Ronas IT, just drop a message or fill in a short form, and we'll get back to you within the next 24 hours, as promised.

You might think it's risky to work with a third party rather than hire React Native app developers. The truth is that any contractor doesn't want to deal with disappointing results and a bad reputation as a consequence. To be sure that outsourcing is safer than you think, explore our hiring model in the following part.

How do we make sure we've hired the right person at Ronas IT?

We'd like to share our experience as transparency in processes is one of the core values in our communication with the clients. So, what is our key to having the best specialists in the team? To avoid the risks of hiring the wrong developer we do an internship to get middle and senior developers we are 100% sure of. From our experience, the optimal regularity to hold an internship is half a year.

Where do we find React Native developers for the internship?

Usually, we post information about it on job search websites and then check if the candidates fit the minimum criteria required to enroll in the internship.

How long does it take for the intern to become a skilled professional?

On average, it takes 3 months to become a junior React Native programmer, 2 years to become a middle development professional, and around 5 to 6 years to get a senior grade. However, we had a case when a junior specialist upgraded to the mid-level in just a year.

How is an internship structured?

We plan a project for the interns that can be built in one month or a month and a half. Mentors split the project into weekly tasks. A brief is held every Monday to keep everyone up to date and schedule tasks for the next week. The time needed for the internship is around twenty hours per week. At the end of the training period, interns present their projects to the team.

Who can fit the role of a React Native intern?

It's a practice-based professional learning, so an applicant likely has a tech degree (or is finishing a BA degree) along with some coding experience. A starting React Native developer should at least know the React.js library. And, the last but still important thing is a short test task. Usually, we ask them to integrate an open API with screens from our ready-made app design in Figma.

What types of applications do your interns usually develop during the internship?

The topic of the app is usually different, our senior developers make up unique tasks before each internship. The beginning React Native developers work on apps like HR mobile app for onboarding new employees, mobile e-learning platform where users can buy courses. Also, once our interns created an app dedicated to Rick and Morty universe, with its help users could search the database of characters, episode descriptions, and unique cartoon locations. So you may not worry, as our interns are open to any complicated challenge.

Why do you need that many developers on board?

All of them follow the same standards and constantly grow their expertise. With the help of internships, we make sure that we always have a free hand to help during a real-life project work with our customers. In case one member of the team gets sick or needs to leave the project for a while, we always have employees to substitute them and maintain the same quality of work without losing deadlines.

As you can see, training employees from scratch and turning them into skilled React Native developers is a long-lasting process, and we take it very seriously. In case you choose to grow an in-house team, you will have to patiently wait till developers adapt to your standards and processes before letting them handle complex tasks.

Therefore, if you have a ready idea of an application, but do not have an engineering team, it's much easier to work with a company that has already gone through the processes of hiring and training specialists described above than to do it yourself.

Did you like our approach to inner processes? We can show that they work well in action. Let our React Native team develop your next app. Share details about your project here.

To sum up

Anyway, if you're still up for the tough challenge of growing your own team, you can hire a React Native engineer according to the criteria we have given or grow your own specialists as we do. You can build a project with freelancers to save your money on supporting the in-house programmers. Or you can hire a company that will do the whole job from the proof of concept to the release on app stores and provide the post-release maintenance. We're not implying anything but hinting a bit.