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dot net developer

title: Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for .NET Developer
salary: $80,000 - $140,000
categories: [Software Development, IT, .NET, C#]
description: A comprehensive overview of the key responsibilities, required technical skills and professional background for the role of a .NET Developer.
Comprehensive, recruiter-style overview of the .NET Developer role: detailed responsibilities,
in-demand technical and soft skills, career progression, education and experience expectations.

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires an experienced .NET Developer who designs, builds, tests and maintains scalable, secure, and high-performance web and backend applications using the Microsoft .NET stack. The ideal candidate writes clean, maintainable C# code, implements RESTful APIs, works with relational and NoSQL databases, applies modern architectural patterns (microservices, domain-driven design), and helps drive CI/CD and cloud-native deployment on Azure or AWS. This position collaborates closely with product managers, UX designers, QA engineers and other developers in an Agile environment and contributes to technical strategy and continuous improvement initiatives.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior .NET Developer or Entry-Level Software Engineer with C# experience
  • Backend Developer or Application Developer transitioning to .NET
  • Full Stack Developer with strong C# or ASP.NET background

Advancement To:

  • Senior .NET Developer or Senior Software Engineer
  • Technical Lead / Team Lead for .NET teams
  • Software Architect or Solutions Architect (Cloud/.NET)
  • Engineering Manager or Head of Development

Lateral Moves:

  • Full Stack Developer (React/Angular + .NET)
  • DevOps / Cloud Engineer (Azure/AWS specialization)
  • Backend Services Engineer focused on microservices and APIs

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Architect, design, and implement robust, scalable backend services and APIs using C#, .NET Core / .NET 7+ and ASP.NET Core that meet functional and non-functional requirements such as performance, scalability, and security.
  • Develop and maintain RESTful APIs and GraphQL endpoints, ensuring consistent versioning, documentation, and backward compatibility for external and internal consumers.
  • Implement data access layers and complex queries using Entity Framework Core, Dapper or raw ADO.NET, optimize T-SQL stored procedures and indexes for SQL Server or migrate queries to cloud-managed databases to improve throughput and latency.
  • Build and operate microservices-based solutions including service-to-service communication patterns, fault tolerance, circuit breakers, and distributed tracing instrumentation for observability.
  • Design and execute automated unit, integration, and contract tests using xUnit, NUnit, MSTest and test doubles to enforce test-driven or behavior-driven development best practices.
  • Lead performance tuning and profiling efforts: identify memory leaks, CPU hotspots, and slow queries, then implement caching strategies (Redis, in-memory) and load-optimized patterns to meet SLAs.
  • Integrate applications with third-party services and APIs, implement secure authentication and authorization using OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT and Microsoft Identity Platform / Azure AD.
  • Implement CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins) to automate building, testing, security scans, and deployment to dev/stage/prod environments with rollback strategies and feature flags.
  • Containerize applications using Docker and deploy scalable workloads to Kubernetes (AKS, EKS) or other orchestration platforms, including Helm chart creation and configuration management.
  • Collaborate with product owners and UX teams to translate business requirements into technical specifications, estimate effort, and decompose epics into deliverable user stories for Agile sprints.
  • Participate in code reviews, mentor junior engineers, enforce coding standards, design patterns and consistent project structure to increase maintainability and reduce technical debt.
  • Define and maintain application logging and monitoring solutions (Application Insights, ELK, Prometheus/Grafana), set up meaningful alerts, and respond to production incidents as part of on-call rotations.
  • Drive cloud adoption and cost optimization efforts by right-sizing resources, leveraging PaaS services (Azure App Service, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB) and applying best practices for fault domains and resiliency.
  • Design and implement secure coding practices, perform threat modeling and remediate security vulnerabilities (OWASP Top Ten), and participate in regular security and compliance reviews.
  • Manage data migrations and ETL pipelines, design schema changes with backward compatibility in mind and implement database versioning and migrations using EF Migrations or Flyway.
  • Work cross-functionally with QA to create reproducible environments, automated end-to-end tests and continuous validation pipelines for release quality and faster feedback loops.
  • Collaborate with architecture and platform teams to define API contracts, versioning strategy, shared libraries and internal SDKs to reduce duplication and increase developer velocity.
  • Research and prototype new frameworks, productivity tools, and architectural patterns to improve engineering efficiency and modernize the technology stack.
  • Participate in sprint planning, grooming and retrospectives; report progress, risks and technical impediments clearly and propose mitigation plans to stakeholders.
  • Establish and document operational runbooks, deployment procedures and disaster recovery plans to ensure high availability and business continuity.
  • Assist in onboarding, technical training and building a knowledge base of coding standards, design doc templates, and reusable components across teams.
  • Engage with customers or internal stakeholders to gather feedback, prioritize bug fixes and drive iterative improvements to the product roadmap.

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.
  • Produce clear, up-to-date technical documentation for APIs, deployment steps, and architecture diagrams.
  • Contribute to open-source components or internal shared libraries that accelerate development across teams.
  • Assist product management with technical feasibility assessments and proof-of-concept builds for new features.
  • Provide input on hiring, interviewing and evaluating candidates for the engineering team.
  • Help maintain licensing compliance and open-source usage policies across the codebase.
  • Participate in cross-team architecture reviews and guilds for performance, security, and cloud best practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • C# (modern language features, async/await, LINQ) — primary development language for backend and services.
  • .NET Core / .NET 6/7/8+ and ASP.NET Core — building web applications, APIs and middleware.
  • Web API design, RESTful architecture, OpenAPI/Swagger documentation and API versioning strategies.
  • Databases: SQL Server (T-SQL, indexing, query optimization), Entity Framework Core, plus familiarity with NoSQL stores (Cosmos DB, MongoDB).
  • Cloud platforms: Microsoft Azure preferred (App Services, AKS, Azure Functions, Azure DevOps), plus exposure to AWS or GCP.
  • Microservices architecture, distributed systems design, messaging (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Kafka) and eventual consistency patterns.
  • Containerization and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (Helm, manifests, deployment strategies).
  • CI/CD tooling: Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, automated build/test/deploy pipelines and artifact management.
  • Unit/integration testing frameworks (xUnit, NUnit, Moq) and test automation best practices.
  • Source control and branching strategies: Git, PR workflows, code review processes.
  • Observability: logging (Serilog), monitoring (Application Insights, Prometheus), tracing (OpenTelemetry).
  • Security & identity: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, OWASP secure coding practices and application hardening.
  • Frontend integration basics: knowledge of HTML/CSS and at least one modern frontend framework (React, Angular, Vue) to collaborate on full-stack solutions.
  • Performance engineering: profiling tools, caching strategies (Redis), and scalability design.

Soft Skills

  • Strong written and verbal communication for clear API documentation, architecture rationale and stakeholder updates.
  • Analytical problem-solving: break down complex problems, develop pragmatic solutions and validate with data.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: work cross-functionally with product, QA, UX and operations to deliver customer value.
  • Ownership and accountability: take end-to-end responsibility for features from design through production support.
  • Mentorship: coach junior engineers, provide constructive code review feedback and share best practices.
  • Adaptability: learn new frameworks, tools and cloud services quickly as business needs evolve.
  • Time management and prioritization to balance feature delivery, technical debt and operational stability.
  • Customer-focused mindset: translate user needs into reliable and usable software solutions.
  • Attention to detail when writing secure, tested and documented code.
  • Continuous improvement orientation: drive process improvements, retrospective actions and automation.

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 Computer Science or related field or relevant industry certifications (Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate, Azure Solutions Architect, or equivalent).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Engineering
  • Mathematics or related technical degree

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2 to 8+ years depending on level (Mid-level: 2–5 years; Senior: 5+ years).

Preferred:

  • 5+ years building enterprise-grade applications with .NET and C#, demonstrated ownership of end-to-end features, hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures (Azure preferred), microservices, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and production support responsibilities.
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