---
esco_uri: http://data.europa.eu/esco/skill/034c29fa-c3ba-45ea-b8f3-bf8e3705e386
esco_label: "Erlang"
relation: optional
onet_soc: 15-1252.00
source: model-knowledge
confidence: high
qa_count: 0
generator: gemma3:27b (prompt-designed and spot-checked by Claude)
generated: 2026-07-10
---

# Erlang — Software Engineer

As a Software Engineer proficient in Erlang, you're not just *writing* code; you’re building highly concurrent, fault-tolerant systems. Daily tasks revolve around designing and implementing applications leveraging the Actor Model – think message passing between lightweight processes instead of shared memory. This means heavy use of OTP (Open Telecom Platform) behaviours like GenServer, Supervisor, and Agent to manage state and handle failures gracefully. You'll spend time reasoning about process lifecycles, error handling strategies (let it crash!), and designing for distribution. Tools include Rebar3 for build automation, Dialyzer for static analysis (catching errors *before* runtime is huge in Erlang), and potentially observability tools like Prometheus/Grafana to monitor system health.

Typical projects might involve building real-time communication servers (like WhatsApp used Erlang!), distributed databases, or any application needing 'nine nines' uptime. You’ll be deeply involved in defining message formats, handling concurrency issues (avoiding race conditions is paramount), and writing robust tests – often property-based testing with tools like QuickCheck to verify system behaviour under various conditions.  Debugging isn't about stepping through code; it's about tracing messages between processes using tools like `observer` or logging strategically.

A common pitfall is trying to apply traditional, imperative programming patterns to Erlang’s functional and concurrent nature. Thinking in terms of immutable data and avoiding shared state are crucial. Another is underestimating the importance of supervision trees – a poorly designed supervisor can negate all the benefits of fault tolerance.  Good Erlang code isn't just correct; it's *resilient*. It anticipates failures, handles them elegantly, and continues operating even when parts of the system go down.

What 'good' looks like is clean, well-documented code that prioritizes concurrency and fault tolerance. It’s a system where errors are handled predictably, processes are supervised effectively, and scalability isn’t an afterthought but a core design principle.  A strong Erlang engineer understands the trade-offs between performance, reliability, and complexity, and can make informed decisions to build systems that meet demanding requirements.

## Weitere Anreicherung

Stage-2 source for future practitioner grounding: arXiv cs.SE (software-engineering preprints).
