Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for ASP.NET Developer
💰 $80,000 - $140,000
🎯 Role Definition
An ASP.NET Developer is a back‑end software engineer responsible for designing, developing, testing, and maintaining web applications and APIs using Microsoft's .NET ecosystem. The ideal candidate delivers scalable, secure, high‑performance solutions using ASP.NET Core/ASP.NET MVC, C#, Web API, and relational/no‑SQL databases, collaborates with product and design teams, and participates in continuous delivery and DevOps practices. This role often requires hands‑on experience with cloud platforms (Azure/AWS), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and modern CI/CD pipelines.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- Junior .NET Developer / Graduate Software Engineer
- Web Developer (C# / .NET focused)
- Backend Developer (C#, JavaScript)
Advancement To:
- Senior ASP.NET Developer
- Lead Software Engineer / Technical Lead
- Solutions Architect / Cloud Architect
- Engineering Manager
Lateral Moves:
- Full‑Stack Developer
- DevOps Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer
- API Architect / Integration Engineer
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Design, implement and maintain enterprise web applications using ASP.NET Core and/or ASP.NET MVC, ensuring modular, testable, and maintainable code that follows SOLID principles and .NET best practices.
- Build and maintain RESTful APIs and Web API endpoints in ASP.NET, including versioning, request validation, error handling, rate limiting, and API documentation using Swagger/OpenAPI.
- Develop server‑side business logic in C# and .NET, implement domain models, DTOs, mapping, and service layers that cleanly separate concerns and support clear testing strategies.
- Work with Entity Framework Core and/or Dapper to design, implement and optimize database access layers, write efficient LINQ queries, stored procedures, and ensure correct migrations and schema versioning.
- Design and implement authentication and authorization flows using industry standards (OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, ASP.NET Identity) and integrate with identity providers (Azure AD, IdentityServer).
- Optimize application performance and scalability by profiling code, eliminating bottlenecks, adding caching layers (Redis, MemoryCache), and tuning database queries and indices.
- Create and maintain automated unit, integration and end‑to‑end tests using xUnit, NUnit, MSTest, Moq, and BDD/TDD practices; ensure strong test coverage and CI gating.
- Participate in design and architecture reviews, propose pragmatic technical solutions, tradeoffs and migration strategies (for example migrating from .NET Framework to .NET Core/5/6/7).
- Implement logging, distributed tracing and observability using Serilog, Application Insights, ELK/Elastic Stack or similar tooling to monitor application health and troubleshoot production issues.
- Containerize applications with Docker and support orchestration on Kubernetes or managed services, including health checks, resource limits and service discovery.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity) to automate builds, tests, deployments, and infrastructure as code (ARM templates, Terraform).
- Integrate with external services and third‑party APIs, design robust retry/backoff, circuit breaker patterns, and secure secrets management (Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).
- Collaborate with front‑end developers using Razor Pages, Blazor, or SPA frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) to define API contracts and ensure smooth end‑to‑end functionality and UX.
- Execute feature development from requirements through delivery: estimate tasks, write technical specifications, implement changes, and participate in sprint planning and daily stand‑ups.
- Maintain and refactor legacy .NET codebases, remediate technical debt, and implement modernization initiatives while preserving application stability and data integrity.
- Ensure applications meet security, compliance and privacy requirements; perform threat modeling and remediation for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and enforce secure coding standards.
- Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis, produce postmortem documentation, and propose fixes to prevent recurrence.
- Mentor and coach junior developers, conduct code reviews, enforce coding standards, and contribute to team skill development and onboarding processes.
- Collaborate closely with product owners, QA, UX designers and stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions and deliver value iteratively.
- Implement localization, globalization and accessibility enhancements where required to support multi‑region deployments and inclusive user experiences.
- Manage application deployments to cloud platforms (Azure App Service, Azure Functions, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, EC2) and on‑premise IIS servers; handle environment configurations and release coordination.
- Design and implement microservices and APIs for domain separation, including asynchronous messaging patterns (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Kafka) and eventual consistency strategies.
- Maintain and update technical documentation including API specs, architecture diagrams, runbooks, and onboarding guides to support maintenance and knowledge sharing.
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 QA engineers with reproducing and diagnosing complex defects; provide targeted fixes and regression tests.
- Participate in security and vulnerability assessments and implement recommended fixes.
- Provide estimations and contribute to capacity planning and release readiness activities.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- Strong proficiency in C# and the .NET ecosystem (ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET MVC, .NET Framework/NET 5+).
- Experience building RESTful Web APIs and designing API contracts (Swagger/OpenAPI).
- Hands‑on experience with Entity Framework Core, Dapper or other ORMs; proficient in SQL Server/T‑SQL and query optimization.
- Familiarity with asynchronous programming, multithreading, Task‑based programming and performance tuning in .NET.
- Experience with cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure preferred — App Service, Functions, Azure SQL, Azure DevOps) or AWS equivalents.
- Containerization and orchestration: Docker and experience with Kubernetes or AKS/EKS.
- CI/CD tooling: Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity — creating pipelines for build, test and deployment.
- Unit and integration testing frameworks: xUnit, NUnit, MSTest, Moq, FluentAssertions.
- Authentication & authorization: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, ASP.NET Identity, Azure AD integration.
- Logging, monitoring and observability tools: Serilog, Application Insights, ELK/Elastic Stack, Prometheus/Grafana.
- Familiarity with front‑end integration patterns: Razor, Blazor, or SPA frameworks (React/Angular/Vue) and API consumption.
- Experience with caching strategies: Redis, MemoryCache, and HTTP caching headers.
- Knowledge of microservices patterns, distributed systems, messaging (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Kafka).
- Version control with Git, branching strategies, pull requests and code review workflows.
- Experience with security best practices and remediation for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.
Soft Skills
- Strong problem‑solving and analytical mindset with attention to detail.
- Effective verbal and written communication; able to explain technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.
- Team player: collaborative attitude, open to feedback and committed to shared delivery goals.
- Time management and ability to prioritize tasks in a fast‑paced Agile environment.
- Mentorship and coaching abilities; willingness to grow others and share knowledge.
- Proactive ownership mindset and customer‑focused approach to quality and delivery.
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Education:
- Master's degree in a related field or relevant industry certifications (Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate, Azure Solutions Architect, or Microsoft .NET certifications).
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Computer Science
- Software Engineering
- Information Systems
- Data Engineering / Cloud Computing
Experience Requirements
Typical Experience Range:
- 2–5 years for mid‑level ASP.NET Developer roles; 5+ years for senior or lead positions.
Preferred:
- Proven track record building and operating production .NET applications, experience with Azure cloud services, containerization (Docker), microservices, and CI/CD pipelines. Experience modernizing legacy .NET Framework applications to .NET Core/.NET 5+ is highly desirable.