What is Magento at all? Magento 2 is a popular open-source platform for creating and driving online stores. If you want to become a Magento developer, you have to master a bunch of skills needed to build an e-commerce store - not only pure programming is valued. Of course, it will require some professional tech skills, certain knowledge in digital marketing, a bit of creativity, and, of course, a lot of soft skills to cope with the associated teamwork.
Why Magento? First of all Magento 2 is a very flexible and powerful solution. It is an online store engine massively utilized by famous brands such as Nike, Nestle, Samsung, Lenovo, and others. At the same time, being one of the top-scoring players in the eCommerce industry, Magento is also considered a favourable option for smaller stores and startups.
If you're completely novice to programming and software development, Magento might look as complicated as quantum physics, but do not worry - you can work it out! In this article, we'll consider some Magento 2 interview questions and skills you have to demonstrate in order to be hired as a Magento developer. Also, if you're looking to hire a Magento developer, these points can work as interview preparation tips.
Skill 1: Master the scripting language used in Magento 2
Magento 2 uses PHP as its backbone language. By the way, if you're good in PHP, then you're halfway there! Be ready that PHP questions can make a considerable portion of the interview. However, to get a higher salary and grow professionally, your skill set should include a certain level of MySQL, HTML, CSS, JS, and XML. Let's check some Magento basic questions or skills that can be asked by an interviewer.
Skill 2: Name the top advantages and features of Magento 2
Magento MVC architecture: Model View Controller (MVC) helps to make the code modular, flexible, extensible, easy to edit and read through.
Highly adapted to mobile, with touchscreen-friendly admin panel.
Easy-to-generate XML sitemaps and SEO features.
Customizable security instruments.
Top marketplaces integration: Amazon, eBay, etc.
Secure integration with payment gateways like PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
Skill 3: Learn the products supported by the Magento platform
Magento 2 module architecture enables six product types - simple, bundled, grouped, downloadable, configurable, and virtual. Learn them extremely well.
Skill 4: Understand Order Workflow in Magento 2
Basically, the order workflow consists of the following steps and you should be ready to learn everything related to each step:
New Order ⇒ Pending Payment ⇒ Payment Received ⇒ Order Invoiced ⇒ Order Shipped ⇒ Complete.
Skill 5: Operate Magento 2 methods
For example, how different are the "pay" and "capture" operations? Let's check a possible answer: "Pay" method is used to change the invoice status to "paid" when referring to online or offline purchases. "Capture" is a method used only for online purchases; it is called before "pay" and is tied to the start of payment processing.
Skill 6: Manage the Inventory, Sources and Stocks in Magento
A very important skill that enables you to manage your product inventory and track available stocks. Different merchants, such as small stores, warehouses, pickup locations, drop shippers, etc, can use the inventory functions to control the product quantities and logistics.
Skill 7: Operate the Magento Design Patterns
It supports 12 design patterns.
Model-View-Controller pattern
Factory pattern
Registry pattern
Singleton pattern
Front-controller
Service locator
Object pool
Lazy loading pattern
Module pattern
Iterator pattern
Prototype pattern
Skill 8: Describe the Magento module based architecture
Modules and themes in Magento 2 are used as important elements of customization: they let you add different features and properties to a shopping website. Modules have a certain life-cycle, making it possible to install, disable, and remove different elements. Each module is purposely built to introduce new features or extend the functionality of already integrated modules. The purpose of the module system is facilitating website development and troubleshooting -- a Magento developer orchestres many modules to compile the best website functionality.
Skill 9: Make sure to understand module Dependencies and Limitations
Each module renders a separate feature, so if your website has a lot of them, modules are working with little or no knowledge of others. In this situation, disabling or removing one module should not lead to malfunction of other modules. All dependencies must be properly declared and managed on a set of core logic: PHP code, libraries, and the basic functions.
Skill 10: Be ready for Magento tricky questions
Such questions can be related to nuances and specifics of the platform and underlying technology. For example:
Put the following translations in order.
Translate.csv team translations (the file is located in the theme locale/[locale]/.
Translating module files located in app/locale/[locale]/.
Translating files stored in DB table core_translate.
[Answer: 2,1,3].
Can I outsource the job of a Magento 2 developer?
As you know, hiring a Magento 2 developer in the US and Western Europe can be very expensive: for the US alone it's about $76k per annum. If you want to develop an online store of any scale and complexity, consider a possibility to outsource Magento development to foreign professionals in order to cut the costs. Such companies as BridgeTeams can help you form a cost-efficient yet talented team from Eastern Europe and Latin America.
