Software Development Team: Evolving Roles and Responsibilities

A software development team consists of such roles as product manager, engineering manager, tech project manager, software architect, software developers, designers, testers, and team/tech leads. However, 66% of managers admit that recent hires often show up unprepared, largely because expectations and responsibilities were never fully mapped. We’ve seen firsthand that knowing exactly who belongs where keeps skills aligned and delivery on track.

I’m Dmytro Ovcharenko, CEO at Alcor. Over the years, my team and I have seen US tech companies struggle with two extremes: the slow, costly drag of in-house hiring, and the lack of control, quality, and loyalty in traditional outsourcing. That’s exactly why we built our model around software R&D services in Eastern Europe and LATAM – to help you scale fast, without losing control. Through our tech recruitment, Employer of Record, and full operational support, we’ve helped clients grow from 10 to 100 Silicon Valley-level developers in a single year, all while saving up to 40% compared to outsourcing models.

So, how do you structure a software team that’s fast, lean, and built to last – even as new key software development roles and responsibilities continue to emerge? In this guide, you’ll see how each position fits together and what setup gives your tech product a real edge.

Key Takeaways

• When structuring your software team, don’t miss these critical roles: product manager, engineering manager, tech project manager, software architect, software developers, designers, testers, and team/tech leads.
• New roles such as DevOps, AI, and platform engineers are rising fast as cloud complexity and AI adoption accelerate – adding them early protects release velocity and reliability.
• Eastern European and LATAM teams offer top-tier quality at 53% lower employment costs, unlocking rare skills without compromising performance.
• Eastern Europe is home to 1.8M+ tech professionals, while LATAM saw a 26% rise in venture funding in 2024 – both regions are fertile ground for highly specialized engineers.
• Alcor delivers end-to-end tech recruitment, Employer of Record, and turnkey R&D centers in EE and LATAM, letting you scale fast, stay compliant, and avoid legal headaches.

Typical Team Roles in Software Development

To drive your product to success, you need a team of tech talents that is made up of these key roles: 

It’s important to mention that every tech team structure has different software development roles. Thus, project team roles and responsibilities differ from those of a product team. This article spotlights the product team structure aligned with Agile development methodologies, as our company specializes in building R&D engineering teams for product tech companies. So, let’s move to the detailed descriptions of specialists you need for your own tech product team. 

11 Roles in a Software Development Team

1. Product Manager

A Product Manager (PM) is the quarterback of your software development team, a pivotal role in a software project. Their responsibilities cover a vast terrain: crafting and implementing strategies, planning and monitoring product KPIs. PMs typically set ambitious goals to achieve company targets through their products. For this, they keep a keen eye on competitors, thoroughly analyze the market, generate ideas, and manage pricing policies.

But that’s not all – PMs are the glue that binds the team players together. They control and plan tasks, as well as closely interact with developers, a product owner, marketing specialists, sales representatives, and stakeholders. Since PMs collaborate with nearly everyone, they are also responsible for organizing meetings and facilitating them. Their role extends to accepting or rejecting ideas, overseeing technical implementation, and managing documentation and maintenance.

It’s worth noting that in larger organizations, some of these duties – like pricing strategy or KPI management – may be distributed across product marketing managers or engineering leadership, depending on the structure.

2. Product Owner

Another important role in a software development team is a product owner. This expert is accountable for maximizing the value of a product. To do so, they need to understand the client’s specific needs to define goals and create a cohesive vision for each member of a software development team. 

It’s not uncommon for a product owner to wear many hats, including involvement in business strategy, product design, market analysis, and project management. Maybe that’s why they are often confused with project managers and business analysts, even though the latter focus more on the technical aspects of the development process. Product owners, on the other hand, are more into delivering end-user value and shaping the product vision, rather than managing full P&L like a PM or BizOps might.

A product owner’s core responsibilities revolve around: 

• crafting a compelling product roadmap
• managing the product backlog
• defining the product vision
• acting as a liaison between the development team and stakeholders
• evaluating feedback
• ensuring maximum value to the end-users

This role requires a combination of strategic thinking, practical communication skills, and a deep understanding of both business objectives and end-user needs to guide the team in successfully creating a high-quality, market-aligned product.

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3. Tech Project Manager

The tech project manager (TPM) has become one of the indispensable roles in a software engineering team. They bridge the gap between technical teams and business objectives, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with organizational goals. Depending on the company, this role may also appear under titles like Delivery Manager or Program Manager. TPMs are involved in all phases of a project, from planning and execution to risk management and stakeholder communication.

A tech project manager turns the product roadmap into a clear schedule and keeps every milestone visible to the full tech team. They break work into sprints, track velocity, and update management before risks turn into delays. Because they understand DevOps pipelines and test automation, they can work directly with the coding team on build-and-deploy issues – whether the stack is Java, Python, or C#. 

Beyond delivery metrics, an effective TPM safeguards cultural fit. They often drive cross-team dependencies and help align progress with OKRs. They also keep distributed team players aligned on goals, support communication across locations, and ensure that reporting stays focused on outcomes – not noise. They create space for engineers to focus on quality, while keeping the team as a whole moving forward.

4. Business Analyst

Business Analysts study and gather all information about the product, outline the target audience’s needs, and act as a bonding agent between the market and engineers. They analyze users’ behavior/concerns and then compile product enhancement and development recommendations. In many agile environments, where product owners or product managers absorb parts of this role, BAs often focus more on requirements elaboration and process modeling. 

As soon as the product is ready, BAs analyze whether it actually resolves market problems and its importance to end users. They also frequently collaborate with QA teams to define acceptance criteria and support grooming sessions.

5-7. Engineering Manager vs Team Lead vs Tech Lead

Within a modern software development team structure, the engineering manager, tech lead, and team lead form the leadership spine. 

Criteria	Engineering manager	Tech Lead	Team Lead
Core objective	End-to-end delivery & team scalability	Code quality & architecture	Workflow & coordination
Typical background	Senior engineering role with deep tech expertise	Senior developer with a deep stack expertise	Experienced engineer with proven organizational skills
Reporting line	Director / VP Engineering	Engineering manager/architect	Engineering/project manager
People management	Hires, gives performance reviews, and provides coaching	Mentors developers on tech skills	Allocates work, approves leaves, and gives feedback
Span of control	Multiple teams and cross-team initiatives	Technical depth across a single team’s stack	Day-to-day operations within a single team

Working in tandem, these roles of team members in software development focus on what they do best – and keep product quality and team motivation high under high delivery pressure.

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8. Software Architect

This specialist takes the lead in orchestrating the internal arrangement of the software and aligning it with product requirements and available resources. Grounded in business needs, architects outline technical and functional instruments essential for product development. But they aren’t mere planners – architects roll up their sleeves and get hands-on in the development process. Not to mention that they craft the very design of the system.

These experts should have a strategic vision as they plan for software enhancements, extensions, and the addition of new features. A master of optimization, a perfect software architect navigates the complexities to find the optimal technical solutions that align seamlessly with the product, while also driving adherence to coding standards and influencing long-term tech direction through internal governance practices like tech radars.

9. Software Developers

While discussing important roles in a software development team, programmers are crucial. These are the wizards who bring the code to life. They use various programming languages, frameworks, and libraries to make it possible. 

Due to their experience, coders have three ranks, and our latest salary benchmark reveals what each level costs in the USA, Eastern Europe, and LATAM: 

Level	Years of experience	USA*	Eastern Europe*	LATAM*
Junior	1-3 years	89,500	37,500	28,800
Middle	3-5 years	100,236	46,680	41,742
Senior	5-10+ years	122,052	68,823	62,961
Alcor 2025 developer salary monitoring (average annual, USD, gross)

As you can see, even at the senior tier, hiring in Eastern Europe can reduce payroll by approximately 44%, while LATAM delivers approximately 48% savings compared to the United States – without compromising talent quality or the responsibilities of a software developer.

Software engineers also specialize as full-stack, front-end, or back-end developers. Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey shows that JavaScript leads at 66% of professional developers, followed by HTML/CSS at 61.9%, Python and SQL at 58.6%, Java at 29.4%, C# at 27.8%, and others.

They all collaborate closely with designers, testers, product engineers, and other team members. This ensures a seamless parallel workflow where everyone’s expertise intertwines to build exceptional software, with developers also taking ownership of unit testing and participating in code reviews to uphold quality across the codebase.

10. UX/UI Designers

Among the key roles in the software development team are also UX/UI designers. User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) may be distinct, but they are harmoniously intertwined. Both demand a blend of creativity and technical prowess.

UX designers ensure the browsing experience and features are accessible to users. They meticulously analyze the target audience’s behavior to sculpt an interface that guides users effortlessly through the product. This often includes close collaboration with product managers and product owners during discovery workshops to align on user needs, goals, and product direction.

On the other hand, UI designers translate those insights into pixels – choosing fonts, colours, motion, and micro-interactions that express brand and boost usability. Although these are two team roles in a software development process, the UX/UI designer often wears both hats.

11. QA Engineers

Quality assurance anchors the application development team’s roles and responsibilities, ensuring every release is thoroughly vetted before it reaches users. In a high-velocity software engineering team, QA Engineers partner with the coding crew, DevOps, and product management to keep quality metrics in the green and rework in check.

A QA Engineer is a common role in the software development team, typically divided into two specializations: Manual and Automation QA – both essential to safeguarding software quality from ideation to deployment.

Manual QA Engineers take on the role of the user. They walk through real-life scenarios, verify functionality, and identify usability gaps that automation may miss. Their meticulous testing uncovers edge cases, validates new features against requirements, and provides detailed bug documentation to steer developers away from costly mistakes.

Automation QA Engineers, on the other hand, build scripts and frameworks to scale testing efforts. They apply coding skills to automate regression checks, run performance tests, and monitor system behaviors under pressure. After executing automated test runs, they analyze results and compile reports – ensuring fast feedback loops without sacrificing depth.

Together, Manual and Automation QA Engineers form a quality shield that supports speed without compromising trust.

Curious how to build a tech team through a Build-Operate-Transfer model? Read our article!

3 Emerging Roles in A Software Development Team

Scroll through a tech job board today and you’ll spot titles that barely existed five years ago.

Demand for AI-savvy talent has soared by more than 60% in a single year, while ads for platform and DevOps specialists have doubled. What’s driving the shift? Cloud systems are bigger, release cycles are shorter, and products now hinge on real-time data and machine learning. To keep pace, a software engineering team needs fresh expertise in automation, reliability, and AI – roles that have emerged from the pressure to ship faster without compromising trust.

1. DevOps Engineer

In an application development team, the DevOps engineer acts as the bridge between development and operations – the one who makes sure great code doesn’t get stuck in limbo.

They design and maintain CI/CD pipelines that smoothly integrate every commit into production, with fewer failures and faster recovery times. This doesn’t just keep things efficient – it frees up other IT team roles to focus on building, not debugging deployment issues.

On the ground, that means automating everything from database migrations to container orchestration. It’s deeply technical work, but its impact directly shapes the day-to-day responsibilities of software developer colleagues. I’d say DevOps is more like a culture focused on Infrastructure-as-Code, observability, incident response, and close collaboration with Site Reliability Engineers (SREs).

DevOps engineers are especially vital in SaaS products, e-commerce, fintech, and health-tech – anywhere that uptime matters and delivery needs to be constant, secure, and fast. If your team is transitioning from a monolith to microservices, a skilled DevOps hire can cut your release cycle from monthly to hourly.

2. AI Engineer

Once a research-lab specialty, the AI engineer is now a pillar of any forward-looking software engineering team. An AI engineer focuses on the practical application of artificial intelligence and machine learning, building and deploying systems that leverage these technologies. They bridge the gap between theoretical AI concepts and real-world applications, working with algorithms, models, and data to create solutions for various industries.

Daily work begins with framing the business question, followed by building features, fine-tuning large language models, and running A/B tests until the desired accuracy is achieved. 

They rarely work alone in production – partnering closely with data engineers to build pipelines and with MLOps specialists to deploy and monitor models effectively. They also collaborate with designers on rapid prototypes and with product management to translate lift metrics into roadmap priorities. Because their models drive decisions, they also audit fairness and monitor drift, ensuring insights stay relevant long after release.

This role is a game-changer for companies swimming in data – think SaaS platforms, fraud-detection tools, marketplaces, and productivity apps. If your product can benefit from personalization, automation, or predictive insight, an AI engineer is the one who turns data into a true differentiator.

3. Platform Engineer

Micro-services, cloud sprawl, and security mandates have pushed many teams to the edge of cognitive overload. No surprise, then, that analysts expect 80% of large engineering organizations to establish platform-engineering teams by 2026 – almost double the share in 2022. These specialists design and run internal developer platforms that make delivering software easier, safer, and more consistent. 

A platform engineer thinks like a product owner and codes like an SRE. They curate reusable modules, wrap them in clear APIs and dashboards, and embed compliance through policy-as-code – governing everything from secrets to cost controls. The result? Standardized, audit-ready “golden paths” that eliminate duplication and reduce setup time. When a new service needs to go live, devs push code; the platform handles the rest.

As part of the broader DevEx mission, platform engineers often track lead time, change failure rates, MTTR, and developer satisfaction. Many teams house FinOps and DevEx under the same umbrella to align speed, safety, and spend. And while SREs ensure flights stay in the air, platform engineers build the runway.

This role excels in organizations that run dozens of microservices or multiple application teams, requiring a common “paved road” to production. It’s equally valuable for scale-ups moving from ad-hoc scripts to regulated, audit-ready pipelines, ensuring the wider software engineering team ships faster without sacrificing reliability.

Tips for Building a Perfect Software Development Team

1) Have a clear scaling vision 

Having a clear product vision is a solid start – but it won’t get you far without a plan for execution. That means figuring out the structure of your future team: size, tech stacks, and hiring location. 

Take People.ai, a San Francisco-based tech company: they came to us with a bold idea, and we helped them build a 25-person IT team with an office, payroll, and support in Ukraine. They scaled fast, kept those very engineers as their core product team, and soon achieved unicorn status after a Series D funding round, reaching a $1.1 billion valuation. The funding round, which raised $100 million, was co-led by Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital. That’s what intentional growth with all the right software development and implementation team roles looks like.

2) Prioritize hiring T-shaped programmers

Then, you can move on to filling different roles in your software development team. As you may know, the workforce can be divided into two categories based on their skills: generalists and specialists. My advice is to get the best of both worlds and focus on hiring generalists who possess specialties. Such experts are typically referred to as T-shaped developers. Not only do they have in-depth technical knowledge and hands-on coding experience, but they also demonstrate advanced collaborative abilities, emotional intelligence, proactivity, empathy, and problem-solving skills.

The best way to find and identify such software engineers is via an experienced tech recruitment agency. This is what a product company, Ledger, did when it set its sights on scale-up abroad. With our support, they built a high-performing engineering unit of 10+ QA talents and secured full legal and compliance coverage along the way.

3) Tap into a foreign talent pool for rare expertise

Scroll a global tech job board and you’ll see Kyiv, São Paulo, and Bogotá posting the same niche roles once found only in San Francisco. According to our IT market analysts, emerging Europe boasts over 1.8 million tech professionals – making it the second most concentrated region for ICT talent after Western Europe – while venture investment in LATAM start-ups jumped 26% in 2024 and is forecast to grow again in 2025, reflecting a deeper bench of experienced engineers.

What do those numbers mean for you? Reaching beyond home turf expands both the size and the skill diversity of your software engineering team, often at 53% lower employment costs. 

Alcor turns that reach into reality.

Our IT recruitment services team sources and hires from scratch specialists in AI, DevOps, fintech security, and other hard-to-find domains, presenting only pre-vetted candidates from the 253K database who match your stack and culture. Once you choose, our Employer of Record service steps in: we handle compliant contracts, taxes, and benefits in each country, so you operate a full-fledged tech R&D team without opening a legal entity.

4) Set ambitious yet realistic goals for your developers

Having business goals is a no-brainer, but you shouldn’t overlook the real MVPs of your success – your software engineers. Getting a handle on each team member’s career goals is crucial while keeping an eye on the overall growth of the development team. Consider using the SMART approach to set goals for software engineers. You’ve got a buffet of choices: career, technical, interpersonal, leadership, and community goals, which can be divided into long-term and short-term ones.

5) Establish clear communication

Clear and constant communication is a cornerstone of a highly productive and successful development team. This holds even truer for remote teams that miss the luxury of instant communication. Tools help (yes to Slack, Notion, Jira, etc.), but the rituals make the difference.

Weekly department check-ins keep everyone aligned. Monthly one-on-ones provide an opportunity to discuss what’s working and what’s not. Feedback should be honest and regular – sugarcoating kills productivity faster than conflict ever will.

In short? Be clear, be kind, be consistent.

6) Create a pleasant work environment

The software development process can be quite overwhelming, exacerbated by the risk of burnout from working overtime. According to a report by Haystack Analytics, the pandemic increased burnout in 81% of software developers. This led to decreased performance, a lack of motivation, and even instances of quiet quitting. As a manager, it becomes crucial to prioritize and create a healthy work-life balance for your programmers. This may include flexibility in working hours, fair compensation adjustments, enhanced benefits packages, and opportunities for growth. 

Another thing to consider is corporate culture. According to Eagle Hill’s survey, 76% of workers believe culture significantly influences efficiency. Therefore, focus on clearly defining your company’s mission, core values, and goals, and promoting transparency. This attracts top talent and improves retention, creating a positive and thriving work environment.

On top of that, don’t underestimate the power of team cohesion. A development team thrives when individuals feel like they’re part of a unified whole – where trust, mutual support, and shared responsibility drive performance. Strengthen this through consistent communication, team rituals, and collective ownership of outcomes.

7) Competitive employee value proposition

A first-rate Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is no longer optional when you’re competing for senior developers who can pick from a dozen offers. Salary still matters, but the edge often comes from benefits that speak to long-term upside and daily quality of life.

Why developers say yes:

• Market-matched basics: remote-first policies, learning budgets, and private health cover keep you level with top competitors
• True ownership: stock-option plans turn engineers into partners, not renters. The promise feels real when backed by clear vesting schedules and fair exercise windows.

Opt for software development in Ukraine and save up to 60% on expenses while offering a generous benefit package. Contact us for details!

Proof it pays off

When Dotmatics set up its Eastern European R&D center with Alcor’s recruitment process outsourcing service and back-office support, every hire received an equity package. In 2025, Siemens acquired the company, and software engineering teams received their stock option payouts in full – a benefit that exceeded expectations and left developers genuinely satisfied. This success story now strengthens our recruitment pitch, offering candidates verifiable proof of long-term value, not just promises.

Scale Up Your Software Development Team with Alcor

We understand your pain – trying to avoid endless candidate filtering, poor cultural fit, language barriers, and unclear processes. Alcor has your back in building a top-notch tech team for software development in Latin America. We can hire developers in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. Or maybe you’re feeling the Eastern European vibe? We’ve got you covered! Alcor will hire developers in Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, or Romania. Additionally, we offer a broad range of specializations, including Fintech and Blockchain, AgriTech, and PropTech recruitment. 

We focus on what matters: with almost a decade of experience in software R&D center development and growth, our 40 tech recruiters are pros at finding and hiring the perfect T-shaped engineers with the right tech stack, strong communication skills, and the mindset to scale with you. The result? We often wow our clients, as 4 out of 5 candidates are usually invited for an interview, and 98.6% shine during probation.

But wait, there’s more! We’re not just about tech recruitment; we’ve got your business sheltered for building a dedicated development center with your own tech team from day one  – without any buyout costs. Alcor also provides comprehensive back-office and legal support through our EOR solution – from payroll and benefits to compliance and local regulations – ensuring your operations run smoothly from day one.