What skills doth a good developer possess?

This is a work-in-progress document of the skills that developers at Directi are expected to possess / develop. Granted that all developers at Directi do not possess all the skills listed herein. This document serves as a "skills-to-acquire" list for our existing team, as well as a reference list for aspiring applicants. As someone who wants to join our organization, you should have several of these mastered, and be prepared to tackle the rest -

Capability Matrix

Skill	Software Engineer (2+ yrs)	Sr Software Engineer (4+ yrs)	Tech Lead (8+ yrs)	GM (10+ yrs)
Algorithmic skills
Understand and dissect complex problems quickly	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Understand trade-offs between space / time complexity	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Come up with solutions with minimal space / time complexity	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Reasonably mathematically savvy	Bonus	Bonus	Should have	Should have
Familiarity with graph theory, graph traversals etc	Bonus	Bonus	Should have	Should have
Data Structures
Basic Knowledge of data structures - Hashmaps, Binary tree, B-Tree, B+Tree, Linked Lists etc	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Understanding of trade-offs between various data structures etc	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced Knowledge of implementation of data structures - Hashmaps, Binary tree, B-Tree, B+Tree, Linked Lists etc	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
RDBMS
Basic RDBMS knowledge	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced RDBMS knowledge	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Query optimization	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
RDBMS tuning	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Replication and Clustering	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
RDBMS Scalability	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Caching
Basic knowledge of caching	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced caching strategies	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Design and modeling
Strong knowledge of OOPs	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Design patterns and application thereof	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Understanding of KISS, YAGNI, DRY, SOC, SRP, Loose Coupling etc	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Networking
Basic knowledge of DNS	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Protocol level understanding of TCP / UDP	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Deep understanding of OSI stack	Should have	Should have	Should have	Must have
Basic understanding of Routing concepts	Should have	Should have	Should have	Must have
Socket programming
Ability to implement a protocol server/client	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Ability to write high performance server/client	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Understanding of Async I/O	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Understanding of various network protocols	Should have	Should have	Should have	Must have
Web application development
Basic HTML and CSS	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Basic Javascript	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Protocol level knowledge of HTTP	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced HTML and CSS	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Advanced Javascript	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Ajax / Flex	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Understanding of MVC architecture	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Multi-threading and concurrency
Basic knowledge of multi-threading	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced knowledge of multi-threading / trade-offs	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Automated Testing
Understanding of unit testing	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
TDD	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Writing code conducive to Automated testing	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Planning and writing functional tests	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Planning and writing stress tests	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of unit and functional testing frameworks for relevant platforms	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
OS Concepts
Understanding of OS concepts, kernel, interrupts, native libraries etc	Bonus	Bonus	Should have	Must have
Understanding of OS process scheduling concepts	Bonus	Bonus	Should have	Must have
IPC / RPC / Web Services
Knowledge of different forms of IPC / RPC	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of various protocols involved and trade-offs	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Basic implementation knowledge of any one RPC mechanism	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Advanced knowledge of SOAP / REST / other remoting	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Security
Knowledge of OWASP	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of Network layer security	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of secure architectures	Bonus	Bonus	Should have	Must have
Internationalization
Knowledge of Unicode and its implementations	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of implementation of internationalized interfaces	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Understand implications of internationalized data in RDBMS, searches, indexing etc	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Development Methodologies
Knowledge of Agile, XP, Scrum, TDD and pairing	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of Identifying code smells and Refactoring	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Scaling
Write and plan stress tests to determine scalability	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Ability to identify scalability and performance bottlenecks quickly	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Ability to determine whether an application is / will be disk bound, memory bound, cpu bound, network bound etc	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Understanding of all layers from the hardware to the application to determine bottlenecks	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of scaling techniques on the application side such as Async IO, caching, multi-threading etc	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of scaling techniques on the data side such as Identifying optimized data structures, caching strategies, Horizontal / Vertical partitioning, replication / clustering	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Knowledge of scaling techniques on the app server side such as clustering and load balancing	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
System Administration
Basic Unix commands and shell operation (including grep, awk, sed, regex and shell / perl scripting)	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Basic Windows administration	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Usability
Knowledge of information architecture	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Ability to design intuitive UI	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Communication Skills
Good grammar - written and oral	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Ability to understand discussions well	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Ability to articulate a concept / subject well	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Good command over vocabulary	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Penchant for Writing
Frequently writes internal / external documents / articles	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Conducts internal and external training sessions	Should have	Should have	Must have	Must have
Penchant for reading
Avid reader of tech and industry blogs, articles, news and books etc	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Strategy and Vision
Business acumen	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Ability to determine features and product strategy	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Platform Selection
Ability to select languages, OS, RDBMS, Data structures, Frameworks, libraries, Hardware for an application	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Understand performance, cost and other trade-offs between myriad platform choices	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Architecture
Understanding of deployment architectures and their trade-offs	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Capacity Planning
Ability to plan and conduct capacity planning exercises	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Soft Skills
Likeable / people's person	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Ability to garner respect amongst peers by demonstrable knowledge and actions	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Proactive mentor who loves to impart and share knowledge	Should have	Must have	Must have	Must have
Attract and Recruit 'A' players	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Train and grow team	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Contribute to process evolution	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Motivate and inspire the team	Bonus	Bonus	Must have	Must have
Product Evangelism
Frequently blog	Bonus	Should have	Must have	Must have
Misc
Humility	Must have	Must have	Must have	Must have

What skills doth a good developer possess?

Capability Matrix

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