See the top technical and behavioral skills and phrases desired by employers.
Technical Skills/Phrases
Core technical skills and phrases employers request most often.
Apply C# 12 primary constructors and collection expressions on .NET 8 LTS, and C# 14 extension members and field-backed properties on .NET 10 LTS.Model business rules with object-oriented design, interfaces, generics and clear dependency boundaries.Choose suitable collections and write LINQ queries with attention to execution, memory use and database translation.Build Task-based asynchronous operations with cancellation, and coordinate managed threads safely when concurrent work is needed.Explain CLR execution, JIT compilation and garbage collection when diagnosing allocation or runtime performance problems.Manage NuGet dependencies, reproduce MSBuild builds and use Roslyn analyzers to catch code-quality problems.Design ASP.NET Core REST APIs, with gRPC as an option for suitable service-to-service communication.Write parameterized SQL and use ADO.NET, transactions and indexes to handle relational data safely.Use Entity Framework Core migrations, relationships and query analysis to maintain reliable data access.Write useful unit and integration tests with xUnit.net and isolate dependencies with Moq when appropriate.Debug production faults and use profiling to locate slow code rather than guessing at fixes.Build message-driven workflows with safe retries, duplicate handling and clear failure behavior.Use caching with suitable expiry rules and a plan for keeping stored copies of data consistent.Run .NET applications on Linux and in containers, adding Kubernetes deployment skills for roles that need them.Deploy and operate .NET services on Azure or AWS with appropriate configuration, secrets and access controls.Use Git reviews and CI/CD pipelines to automate repeatable builds, tests and releases.Protect applications through authentication, authorization, input validation and safe handling of sensitive information.Connect logs, metrics and traces to investigate service health and user-facing failures.Modernize older .NET Framework applications while preserving behavior and keeping architecture maintainable.Review, test and explain AI-assisted code while protecting private code and business information.
Behavioral Skills/Phrases
Professional skills and phrases that help candidates collaborate, communicate, and grow into senior roles.
Turn an unclear business request into agreed acceptance criteria.Explain a technical choice in terms that colleagues outside development can understand.Give useful code-review feedback without making criticism personal.Ask focused questions and raise delivery risks before they become surprises.Work with testers and product colleagues to resolve conflicting expectations.Prioritize fixes by their effect on users and important business tasks.Take a production problem through investigation, communication and follow-up.Record decisions and handover details so another developer can continue the work.Break a large change into manageable steps and report progress honestly.Help less experienced colleagues learn without taking over their work.Adapt to an existing application and team before proposing a large rewrite.Use feedback and unfamiliar tasks to identify what to learn next.Problem-solvingCommunicationTeamworkOwnershipAdaptabilityAttention to detailCritical thinkingMentoringStakeholder managementPrioritizationDocumentationContinuous learningCustomer focus
