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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Application Developer

💰 $ - $

EngineeringSoftware DevelopmentIT

🎯 Role Definition

As an Application Developer you will be responsible for designing, developing, testing and deploying software applications that meet business requirements and performance targets. You will work across the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) to build scalable microservices and responsive front-end experiences, integrate third-party systems, and ensure operational reliability in cloud or hybrid environments. This role requires a hands-on developer who is comfortable in Agile teams, writing automated tests, participating in code reviews, and contributing to technical design and architecture discussions.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Software Developer
  • QA Automation Engineer transitioning to Dev
  • IT Systems Analyst with strong programming experience

Advancement To:

  • Senior Application Developer
  • Tech Lead / Lead Developer
  • Solutions Architect
  • Engineering Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer
  • Front-End Specialist (React/Angular)
  • Backend / API Specialist (Microservices)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, develop, and deliver high-quality server-side and client-side application components using languages and frameworks such as Java, C#, .NET Core, Spring Boot, Node.js, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, or Angular, ensuring code is maintainable, reusable, and well-documented.
  • Implement RESTful APIs and GraphQL endpoints, design consistent API contracts, and ensure backward compatibility and version management across microservices and consumer applications.
  • Build and maintain microservices-based architectures with attention to service discovery, fault tolerance, scalability, and observability in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
  • Write thorough unit, integration, and end-to-end automated tests (JUnit, NUnit, Jest, Cypress) and practice Test-Driven Development (TDD) or Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) where appropriate to reduce regressions and ensure quality.
  • Collaborate with product owners and UX designers to translate functional requirements into technical specifications, prototype solutions, and iteratively deliver prioritized features in two-week sprints.
  • Participate actively in code reviews and pair programming sessions to enforce coding standards, share knowledge, and improve the overall quality of the codebase.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve production incidents by analyzing logs, monitoring metrics, tracing transactions, and implementing effective remediation and permanent fixes to minimize downtime.
  • Integrate applications with external systems and third-party APIs (OAuth, SAML, payment gateways, CRM/ERP connectors) while ensuring secure credential handling and robust error handling.
  • Design and tune relational and NoSQL database schemas (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, Redis) for performance, consistency, and data integrity; write efficient SQL and optimize queries and indexes.
  • Implement CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) to automate builds, tests, containerization, and deployments across environments while maintaining rollback and release gating strategies.
  • Containerize applications using Docker and orchestrate deployments with Kubernetes, OpenShift, or similar platforms to enable autoscaling, blue/green or canary deployments, and consistent runtime environments.
  • Apply security best practices across the development lifecycle: input validation, parameterized queries, secure authentication/authorization, secrets management, and static/dynamic code analysis to reduce vulnerabilities.
  • Optimize application performance by profiling CPU and memory usage, reducing latency, caching strategically, and designing asynchronous and event-driven solutions where appropriate.
  • Design and implement event-driven architectures using messaging systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS to build resilient, decoupled workflows and distributed processing.
  • Create and maintain clear technical documentation, runbooks, and architecture diagrams to ensure knowledge transfer and supportability for operations and future development.
  • Lead or contribute to architecture and design reviews, evaluate trade-offs between technologies, and recommend patterns that align with business goals and operational constraints.
  • Mentor junior developers, review their work, and provide constructive feedback to accelerate their growth and improve team productivity and code quality.
  • Collaborate with DevOps and cloud engineers to provision infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, ARM, CloudFormation) and ensure applications are deployed securely and with appropriate monitoring/alerting in place.
  • Participate in cross-functional backlog grooming, sprint planning, and retrospective meetings; estimate tasks reliably and commit to delivering sprint goals.
  • Maintain backwards compatibility and manage technical debt by scheduling refactors, component updates, and library upgrades; plan breaking changes with clear migration paths.
  • Conduct performance and load testing to validate architecture choices, capacity planning, and to identify bottlenecks prior to major releases or scaling events.
  • Ensure compliance with regulatory and corporate policies (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI where applicable) by implementing appropriate data protection, logging, and access controls across applications.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist with user acceptance testing (UAT) cycles and help triage defects reported by QA or end users.
  • Research and prototype emerging technologies, frameworks, and libraries to inform technical strategy and improve developer productivity.
  • Help maintain CI/CD infrastructure, test environments, and developer tooling for consistent local and cloud development experiences.
  • Participate in vendor evaluations and POC integrations for third-party services or platforms.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Strong programming skills in one or more server-side languages: Java (Spring/Spring Boot), C# (.NET/.NET Core), Node.js, or Python.
  • Front-end development experience with modern frameworks: React, Angular, or Vue.js, including responsive design and component-driven architecture.
  • Solid understanding and hands-on experience implementing RESTful APIs and GraphQL, with focus on contract design, documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger), and versioning.
  • Microservices architecture design and implementation, including inter-service communication patterns, circuit breakers, service discovery, and API gateways.
  • Database design and tuning for relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL stores (MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis).
  • Expertise with containerization and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm charts, and familiarity with cloud-managed Kubernetes services.
  • CI/CD pipeline creation and automation using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps; experience with automated test pipelines and deployment gates.
  • Experience with cloud platforms and services (AWS, Azure, GCP) such as EC2, Lambda, ECS/EKS, App Service, RDS, S3, IAM and managed database services.
  • Working knowledge of message brokers and streaming systems: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS, SNS; ability to design event-driven flows and guarantee delivery semantics.
  • Proficiency with source control and branching strategies: Git, GitFlow, pull requests, and code review tooling.
  • Unit, integration, and performance testing frameworks: JUnit, NUnit, xUnit, Jest, Mocha, Selenium, or Cypress.
  • Familiarity with security best practices: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, SAML, OWASP Top 10 mitigation, secrets management and static application security testing (SAST).
  • Monitoring, logging and observability tooling: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, Datadog, New Relic, and distributed tracing (Jaeger, Zipkin).
  • Infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates for reproducible environment provisioning.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication: able to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and produce clear documentation.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a data-driven mindset for diagnosing production issues and prioritizing fixes.
  • Collaborative team player who thrives in Agile/Scrum environments and values feedback through code reviews and retrospectives.
  • Good time management and prioritization skills; able to balance feature delivery with technical debt and operational tasks.
  • Ownership mentality with a focus on end-to-end delivery, reliability, and customer satisfaction.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning attitude to keep pace with evolving technologies and best practices.
  • Mentoring and coaching skills to help develop junior engineers and foster a culture of quality engineering.
  • Attention to detail and a commitment to writing clean, readable, and maintainable code.
  • Strong testing mindset and discipline to enforce quality gates and automated test coverage.
  • Stakeholder management and ability to negotiate scope, timelines, and technical trade-offs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline.
  • Professional certifications such as AWS Certified Developer, Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate, or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Electrical/Computer Engineering
  • Data Science / Applied Mathematics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–6 years of professional experience building and delivering production-grade applications.

Preferred:

  • 4–8 years of experience with full-stack development or strong specialization in backend API/microservice development, experience in cloud-native architectures, and demonstrated track record of delivering complex, scalable systems in an Agile environment.
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