Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Full Stack .Net Software Engineer

🎯 Role Definition

The Full Stack .NET Software Engineer is responsible for designing, developing, testing, and deploying high-quality web applications and services using the Microsoft technology stack. This role demands deep expertise in C# and ASP.NET Core, hands-on experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Angular, or Vue.js), proficiency with relational databases and ORMs (SQL Server, Entity Framework), and experience integrating applications with cloud platforms (Azure or AWS). The engineer will collaborate with product managers, designers, QA, and operations to deliver performant, secure, and maintainable solutions across the entire stack.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior .NET Developer
Web Developer (Frontend or Backend)
Software Engineer (Early-career with C#/.NET experience)

Advancement To:

Senior Full Stack .NET Engineer
Tech Lead / Team Lead
Principal Engineer / Software Architect
Engineering Manager

Lateral Moves:

DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer
Frontend Engineer / UI Architect
Backend Services / API Specialist
Cloud Engineer (Azure/AWS)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design and implement robust, scalable backend services and RESTful APIs using C#, ASP.NET Core, and industry best practices to support high-throughput, low-latency applications.
Build and maintain modern single-page applications (SPAs) using React, Angular, or Vue.js with TypeScript, ensuring responsive, accessible, and performant user experiences.
Lead end-to-end feature delivery: collaborate with product owners on requirements, propose technical designs, estimate work, implement features, and ensure high-quality releases.
Architect and implement microservices-based or modular solutions that enable independent deployment, scalability, and fault isolation across the platform.
Develop, optimize, and maintain relational database schemas, stored procedures, and queries for SQL Server; leverage ORMs like Entity Framework Core for data access and migrations.
Implement authentication and authorization solutions using OAuth2, OpenID Connect, Azure AD, or similar identity providers to secure APIs and user flows.
Write comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests using xUnit, NUnit, Selenium, or Jest to ensure reliability and prevent regressions.
Drive continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar tools to automate build, test, and deployment processes.
Containerize applications with Docker and orchestrate deployments using Kubernetes (AKS/EKS) or platform services, ensuring observability and resilience in production.
Monitor performance and health of applications using APM tools (Application Insights, New Relic, Datadog), diagnose production issues, and implement performance improvements.
Participate in architecture and code reviews to ensure consistent coding standards, maintainability, and adherence to design principles such as SOLID and DRY.
Collaborate closely with UX/UI designers to translate wireframes and mockups into pixel-perfect, accessible, and performant front-end implementations.
Integrate third-party APIs and services, design robust retry and error-handling strategies, and ensure secure data exchange across systems.
Implement logging, metrics, and tracing to improve observability across microservices; define meaningful alerts and runbooks for operational readiness.
Refactor legacy .NET Framework applications to modern .NET Core/.NET 6+ patterns, improving performance, maintainability, and cloud readiness.
Drive cross-functional technical initiatives such as reliability improvements, security hardening, and platform modernization with measurable outcomes.
Mentor and coach junior developers through pair programming, technical onboarding, and organized knowledge-sharing sessions to raise team capability.
Produce clear technical documentation, API contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger), and runbooks to facilitate onboarding and maintenance by other teams.
Lead troubleshooting and incident response activities—perform root cause analysis, implement corrective actions, and document lessons learned.
Estimate project effort and risk, communicate dependencies and timelines to stakeholders, and balance technical debt with feature delivery for sustainable velocity.
Ensure code is production-ready by applying static analysis, code linting, and security scanning tools; remediate vulnerabilities in a timely manner.
Collaborate with QA engineers to define acceptance criteria, automate test cases, and maintain a strong pipeline of regression testing to support frequent deployments.
Drive accessibility and internationalization considerations into feature design to meet regulatory and market requirements.
Advocate for and implement observability, telemetry, and distributed tracing across services to support debugging and capacity planning.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc production investigations, log analysis, and quick fixes to minimize customer-facing downtime.
Contribute to the organization’s technical roadmap and help prioritize engineering investments for scalability and performance.
Collaborate with product managers and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical specifications and implementation plans.
Participate actively in sprint planning, backlog grooming, and other Agile ceremonies to ensure timely delivery and continuous improvement.
Assist with onboarding and recruiting by conducting technical interviews, evaluating candidates, and sharing hiring feedback.
Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment scripts, and infrastructure-as-code templates to reduce manual deployment risk.
Help maintain compliance, security policies, and data protection measures, including code reviews for security-critical changes.
Create reusable components, libraries, and internal tools to accelerate development and enforce best practices across teams.
Coordinate with DevOps and Infrastructure teams to provision staging/production environments and manage quality gates.
Provide periodic technical demos and release notes to stakeholders, ensuring transparency and clear communication on progress.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level proficiency in C# and the .NET ecosystem (ASP.NET Core, .NET 6/7+) for building backend services and APIs.
Strong experience with front-end frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue.js and modern JavaScript/TypeScript development patterns.
Deep knowledge of RESTful API design, OpenAPI/Swagger documentation, and JSON-based contract management.
Proven experience with relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and ORM tools (Entity Framework Core) including query optimization and indexing strategies.
Practical experience architecting and deploying microservices, containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes / AKS / EKS).
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms—Microsoft Azure preferred (App Services, Functions, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB) or AWS equivalents.
Solid understanding of authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, Azure AD).
Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines and tools such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins; experience automating builds, tests, and deployments.
Familiarity with unit, integration, and UI test frameworks and test-driven development (TDD) practices.
Experience implementing observability via logs, metrics, and distributed tracing (Application Insights, Prometheus, Grafana).
Knowledge of performance tuning, profiling, and memory diagnostics for .NET applications.
Experience with source control workflows (Git), branching strategies, and pull request-driven development.
Understanding of security best practices for web applications, including input validation, OWASP Top 10 mitigations, and secure coding patterns.
Experience migrating or modernizing legacy .NET Framework applications to .NET Core/.NET 6+.
Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools (ARM templates, Terraform) and basic networking concepts in cloud environments.
Ability to design resilient retry policies, circuit breakers, and idempotent operations in distributed systems.
Experience with message queuing and event-driven architectures (Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ, Kafka) is a plus.
Comfortable working with build and package management systems (NuGet, npm/yarn) and monorepo or multi-repo strategies.

Soft Skills

Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities with a pragmatic, delivery-focused approach.
Excellent verbal and written communication to articulate technical designs, trade-offs, and implementation plans to cross-functional stakeholders.
Collaborative team-player who proactively shares knowledge and supports teammates in achieving shared goals.
Strong ownership mentality: takes responsibility for delivering features end-to-end and maintaining them in production.
Comfortable working in Agile environments, participating in iterative planning, retrospectives, and continuous improvement.
Ability to prioritize work, balance technical debt and feature development, and adapt to shifting business priorities.
Mentoring and leadership mindset—helps grow junior engineers and contributes to a positive engineering culture.
Attention to detail and commitment to quality, including writing meaningful tests and maintaining clean architecture.

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, Software Engineering, or related technical discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Software Engineering
Information Technology
Computer Engineering
Applied Mathematics or related quantitative disciplines

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3 – 8 years of professional software development experience with at least 2+ years building full stack applications using .NET and modern front-end frameworks.

Preferred:

5+ years of experience as a Full Stack or Backend-focused .NET developer, demonstrable production experience with ASP.NET Core, cloud deployments (Azure/AWS), microservices, and modern SPA frameworks (React/Angular). Experience leading technical design and mentoring engineers is highly desirable.