Engineering video
1:56 · 24 September 2026
Frontend engineers are increasingly expected to handle a larger surface area of changes, including REST APIs, CI/CD, cloud deployments, and database persistence. Developers should prioritize expanding downward from the presentation layer through API design and business logic to relational databases.
Watch section from 0:00 →The number one change I would make, it's start going a bit deeper into the full stack. Because if you look at job descriptions, even front end engineers in 2026, around 76% of them mention rest APIs as a skill, 60% of them mention AI. So you are expected to own a bigger surface of changes. You are expected to also do a bit of backend or extend the backend for frontend. The number one thing you need to learn a bit about rest API design. You need to learn how to get your changes live with CI CD and cloud. You don't need to become a devops engineer overnight, but you should be able to get your applications to production with production grade orchestration and monitoring. And a bit of data modeling. You probably did some data modeling because you're doing state and components, but I'm talking about data modeling when it comes to persistent into databases, right? Now, again, this is for you to be able to deliver on those on that surface, not to be the subject matter expert. So you're not expected to be the devops engineer or the backend engineer, but you need to deliver across the stack. And if I were to start, and in terms of priorities, I would always start at the very top layer, which you're probably familiar with, the presentation layer. And then start getting deeper into, okay, now let me learn a bit about API design and HTTP, finally business logic, which you probably already know. Because we do a lot of business logic in the front end and when we write components and the persistence layer, which is usually for the most part, it's relational databases, okay? There's a lot more to it, but if you know relational databases, you should be more than fine. But you definitely want to be able to go from this presentation layer where you are stuck and kind of make sort of a triangle, right? And that's why you are able because you know a bit of the persistent layer, you know business logic. You can extend the API, and that's how you're able to sell yourself as a full stack developer that's very front and heavy.
