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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Computer Programmer

💰 $60,000 - $120,000

Software DevelopmentITProgramming

🎯 Role Definition

The Computer Programmer is responsible for designing, writing, testing, and maintaining high-quality software solutions that meet business and technical requirements. This individual turns functional specifications and product requirements into reliable, efficient code; collaborates with product owners, QA, operations, and peers to ensure timely delivery; and continuously improves code quality, application performance, and developer productivity. Ideal candidates bring strong programming fundamentals, hands-on experience with current languages and frameworks, solid debugging and testing capabilities, and familiarity with modern development workflows including version control, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and Agile methodologies.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Software Developer or Junior Programmer
  • Computer Science graduate or coding bootcamp graduate with internships
  • QA Tester or Automation Tester transitioning to development

Advancement To:

  • Senior Software Engineer / Senior Programmer
  • Tech Lead or Team Lead
  • Software Architect or Principal Engineer

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer
  • QA Automation Engineer
  • Business Analyst / Product Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Translate functional requirements and technical specifications into clean, maintainable, and well-documented code using languages such as Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, or equivalent; follow language-specific best practices and design patterns to ensure reliability and extensibility.
  • Design, implement, and maintain RESTful APIs and microservices, including authentication, input validation, error handling, and versioning, to support both internal systems and third-party integrations.
  • Write comprehensive unit tests, integration tests, and, where applicable, end-to-end tests to ensure feature quality and reduce regression risk; integrate testing into CI pipelines and monitor test coverage.
  • Participate actively in code reviews to provide constructive feedback, ensure adherence to coding standards, catch defects early, and promote knowledge sharing across the team.
  • Debug production and pre-production issues by reproducing defects, performing root cause analysis, applying fixes, and coordinating hotfix releases when needed; maintain incident logs and post-mortem documentation.
  • Optimize application performance by profiling code, reducing latency, improving memory management, and tuning database queries and indexes; implement caching strategies when appropriate.
  • Collaborate with product managers, designers, QA, and other stakeholders to clarify requirements, propose technical solutions, estimate work, and deliver features on agreed timelines.
  • Implement, configure, and maintain CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps to automate builds, testing, and deployments across environments.
  • Manage source code and branching strategies in Git (or equivalent) repositories, create pull requests, resolve merge conflicts, and enforce release workflows and tagging conventions.
  • Integrate and configure third-party APIs and libraries, evaluate vendor SDKs, and ensure secure and efficient communication between systems (OAuth, API keys, TLS).
  • Maintain and extend database schemas (relational and NoSQL), write complex SQL queries/stored procedures, perform migrations, and ensure data integrity and performance for transactional and analytical workloads.
  • Implement security best practices in application code, including input validation, output encoding, secure storage of secrets, dependency vulnerability scanning, and adherence to company security policies and compliance requirements.
  • Refactor legacy codebases to reduce technical debt, improve modularity, introduce abstraction layers where needed, and document migration strategy and unit test coverage improvements.
  • Develop and maintain automated build and packaging scripts for multiple platforms; ensure reproducible builds and proper artifact management for release pipelines.
  • Deploy applications to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) or container platforms using Docker and orchestrators such as Kubernetes; manage configuration, scaling, and health checks.
  • Monitor application health and availability using observability tools (logging, metrics, distributed tracing) and implement alerts to notify teams of degradations or failures.
  • Create and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, API documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger), and README files to aid onboarding, maintenance, and cross-team communication.
  • Mentor and onboard junior developers by pairing on tasks, delivering technical training sessions, and providing career development feedback while fostering a collaborative team culture.
  • Estimate development tasks, manage individual work backlog, and collaborate with the team to meet sprint commitments and business deadlines under Agile/Scrum or Kanban processes.
  • Build reusable libraries, SDKs, and internal tools that improve development efficiency and consistency across projects, promoting DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and single-responsibility principles.
  • Ensure cross-platform compatibility and responsiveness where applicable; perform browser testing, device testing, and accessibility checks for front-end components.
  • Participate in architectural discussions, contribute to technical roadmaps, and evaluate trade-offs between speed of delivery, maintainability, scalability, and cost.
  • Coordinate with DevOps and infrastructure teams for environment provisioning, database backups, disaster recovery planning, and deployment rollbacks when necessary.
  • Support customer-facing troubleshooting and on-call rotations, responding to escalations, communicating status to stakeholders, and implementing long-term fixes for recurring issues.

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 in cross-functional initiatives such as performance benchmarks, migration projects, or platform modernization efforts.
  • Provide input to procurement and vendor evaluation when new development tools or services are considered.
  • Facilitate knowledge transfer sessions and maintain internal training materials for best practices and common development scenarios.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficient in one or more modern programming languages (examples: Java, C#, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go) with solid understanding of OOP, functional programming, and language idioms.
  • Experience building and consuming RESTful APIs and working with API design tools such as OpenAPI/Swagger.
  • Strong knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server) and experience writing optimized SQL queries; familiarity with NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra) is a plus.
  • Hands-on experience with version control systems—primarily Git—and branching/merging strategies (feature branches, trunk-based development).
  • Familiarity with CI/CD tooling and automation (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, CircleCI) and best practices for automated testing and deployment.
  • Experience with containerization (Docker) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS) for development and production deployments.
  • Practical understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including compute, storage, networking, and managed database services.
  • Competence in writing unit tests, integration tests, and test automation frameworks (JUnit, pytest, NUnit, Jest, Selenium) and using test coverage tools.
  • Debugging and profiling skills using IDE tools, log analysis, application performance monitoring (APM), and tracing systems (New Relic, Datadog, Prometheus, Jaeger).
  • Knowledge of secure coding practices, OWASP top 10 mitigations, and experience performing code-level security reviews and dependency vulnerability management.
  • Familiarity with web technologies and front-end frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) for full-stack roles or collaboration with front-end teams.
  • Ability to design scalable microservices and event-driven architectures, including message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and pub/sub patterns.
  • Experience with build tools and package managers (Maven, Gradle, npm, yarn) and artifact repositories (Artifactory, Nexus).
  • Comfortable working in Unix/Linux environments and scripting with Bash, PowerShell, or Python for automation.
  • Knowledge of application observability, logging frameworks (ELK, Loki), metrics, and alerting configurations.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to break down complex technical problems and propose pragmatic solutions.
  • Clear verbal and written communication, able to explain technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders and produce concise documentation.
  • Team player who collaborates well across cross-functional teams, gives and receives feedback constructively, and champions shared goals.
  • Time management and organizational skills to handle multiple priorities, meet deadlines, and manage scope changes.
  • Attention to detail and a quality-first mindset when writing code, tests, and documentation.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning orientation to stay current with evolving technologies, frameworks, and tools.
  • Mentoring and coaching capability to help junior colleagues improve coding skills and follow best practices.
  • Customer-focused approach to understand user needs, prioritize features, and deliver business value.
  • Critical thinking and ownership mentality—takes responsibility for issues and follows through to resolution.
  • Resilience under pressure during incident response and production outages while maintaining clear communication.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., coding bootcamp + professional experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field; certifications in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), DevOps, or relevant programming languages are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

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

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2 to 7 years of professional software development experience, depending on role level and organizational expectations.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years of hands-on experience in commercial software development with demonstrated impact on shipped products; experience in Agile teams, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud deployments preferred.
  • Prior experience owning features or services from design through production, including monitoring, incident management, and iterative improvements.
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