CAREER GUIDE MANUAL - Inseta

40IT technicians may explore many employment opportunities with insurancecompanies and with brokerages and private firms that offer technicalcomputer support to employers within those industries.4.9 SOFTWARE DEVELOPER 109.4.1 Nature of workA software developer analyses the problems and needs of computer usersand businesses and writes computer programmes to enhance the applicationand efficiency of computer systems.Software developers design, test and maintain systems software that runs theoperating systems of computers; they also work on the application softwareused by the end-users to prepare documents, reports and spreadsheets. Alsoknown as software engineers, software developers use a variety of computerprogramming languages and applications to perform their tasks. They consultwith management and computer users to collect information on businessneeds and work in teams with other IT professionals to evaluate theinformation and to design, write and test new software programmes or tomodify existing systems.With the introduction of new computer systems and the expansion of their use,software programmers have to ensure that different systems can shareinformation and communicate with one another. Codes are therefore devisedto link incompatible platforms, and interfaces are developed to integratemultiple existing software products. Software developers should accordinglybe able to work with several programming languages and a variety ofsoftware packages.Among their other typical duties are to write and maintain the operationaldocumentation of the business systems and to assess new informationtechnologies. Because information and communication technologies developso rapidly, software developers are required to be life-long learners to stayabreast of dynamic changes across the IT world.As the insurance industry expands its need to store, share and retrieve datawithin businesses and to establish electronic and internet links with10The information relating to the career of a software developer was sourced from www.bls.gov; www.kiwicareers.gov.nz;www.careers.co.za; www.prospects.ac.uk; www.collegegrad.com.