Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Developer

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires an experienced Web Developer to design, build, and maintain user-facing web applications and backend services that deliver fast, accessible, and secure digital experiences. The ideal candidate combines modern front-end expertise (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript/TypeScript, React/Vue/Angular) with practical backend/API knowledge (Node.js, Express, REST/GraphQL), strong testing practices, and a production-first mindset for deploying and operating applications on cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure). This role partners closely with product, design, QA, and DevOps teams to turn product requirements into maintainable code, measurable outcomes, and optimized user experiences.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Web Developer or Front-End Developer
UI Engineer or Front-End Intern with production experience
Full-Stack Developer (early-career) transitioning to web specialization

Advancement To:

Senior Web Developer / Senior Front-End Engineer
Front-End Architect or Technical Lead
Engineering Manager or Principal Software Engineer

Lateral Moves:

UX Engineer or Product Designer (technical track)
DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
Product Manager (technical product roles)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Architect, implement, and ship high-quality, responsive web applications using modern front-end frameworks (React, Vue, Angular) and TypeScript/ES6+, ensuring modular, reusable component libraries and consistent design system integration across products.
Design and develop RESTful APIs and GraphQL endpoints in Node.js, Express, or alternative backend stacks to support client applications, ensuring clear contracts, proper versioning, and scalable data access patterns.
Optimize front-end performance end-to-end—reduce bundle sizes, lazy-load assets, implement critical rendering paths, and tune runtime performance to achieve fast Time to Interactive (TTI) and Core Web Vitals improvements across desktop and mobile.
Implement and enforce accessibility (WCAG 2.1+) best practices across UI components, perform accessibility audits, and fix barriers to ensure inclusive experiences for users with disabilities.
Lead cross-functional grooming sessions with product managers and designers to translate user stories into technical tasks, produce accurate estimations, and prioritize work that delivers measurable user and business impact.
Build and maintain automated test suites (unit, integration, end-to-end) using frameworks such as Jest, React Testing Library, Cypress, or Playwright to ensure regression prevention, confidence in deployments, and high code reliability.
Create and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) to enable automated build, test, and deployment workflows, including canary/blue-green strategies and rollback plans for production safety.
Collaborate with DevOps and infrastructure teams to deploy applications to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), configure containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes), and monitor application health with observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, Sentry, New Relic).
Design and optimize secure authentication and authorization flows (OAuth2, JWT, SSO), protect against common web vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, injection) and follow OWASP guidelines in both client and server code.
Integrate third-party services and SDKs (payment gateways, analytics, A/B testing, content management systems) reliably and efficiently, ensuring graceful degradation and privacy-compliant data handling.
Maintain and evolve a scalable component library or design system that enforces consistency in UI, accessibility, and branding while decreasing development friction for product teams.
Diagnose and resolve production issues rapidly by analyzing logs, reproducing errors locally, and applying hotfixes or permanent code changes while communicating incident context and resolution to stakeholders.
Implement client-side caching strategies, service workers, and Progressive Web App (PWA) patterns to improve offline behavior, reduce server load, and provide app-like user experiences on mobile devices.
Drive migration and upgrade projects (framework version updates, TypeScript adoption, bundler/tooling changes) with minimal disruption, providing migration guides, automated codemods, and rollout plans.
Participate in and lead code reviews to ensure code quality, enforce style guides, share domain knowledge, and mentor junior engineers on best practices for scalable front-end and API development.
Design database interactions and data models (SQL and NoSQL) for web application needs, optimize queries to minimize latency, and collaborate with backend engineers on data consistency and caching strategies.
Implement analytics instrumentation, custom events, and tracking plans to provide product and growth teams with actionable insights on user behavior, conversion funnels, and performance impact.
Create and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and onboarding material for architecture decisions, component usage, deployment steps, and debugging procedures to reduce knowledge silos across the engineering organization.
Collaborate with designers to convert Figma/Sketch prototypes into pixel-accurate implementations while maintaining flexibility for responsiveness and maintainability in the codebase.
Advocate for and adopt observability, feature flagging, and experimentation practices that enable safe iterative delivery, low-risk releases, and data-driven product decisions.
Contribute to cross-team initiatives such as security reviews, performance sprints, and platform improvements that raise the engineering bar across multiple products and services.
Estimate, plan, and deliver complex features end-to-end, balancing technical debt reduction, refactoring needs, and new feature development to maximize long-term product velocity and maintainability.

Secondary Functions

Mentor junior and mid-level developers through pair programming, technical feedback, and structured growth plans to elevate team skill levels.
Maintain and update API documentation, style guides, and component catalogs to streamline onboarding and developer experience.
Support QA with reproducible bug reports, steps to reproduce, and sometimes with targeted test automation to reduce release friction.
Collaborate with customer support and product teams to triage user-reported issues, propose workarounds, and prioritize fixes based on impact and severity.
Participate in sprint planning, retrospectives, and all agile ceremonies to continuously improve delivery cadence and team collaboration.
Drive technical spike investigations to evaluate new libraries, frameworks, or architecture patterns, producing actionable recommendations and proofs-of-concept.
Lead small cross-functional projects, coordinate deadlines, and manage stakeholder expectations while delivering on agreed scope and quality.
Assist in hiring by participating in technical interviews, take-home assignments, and candidate evaluations to build a high-performing engineering team.
Help define and measure success metrics for launched features (adoption, performance, error rates) and iterate based on quantitative feedback.
Maintain development environment tooling (linters, formatters, local dev servers) and advocate for automation that decreases onboarding time for new engineers.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level proficiency with HTML5, CSS3 (Flexbox, Grid), semantic markup, responsive design techniques, and cross-browser compatibility strategies.
Deep knowledge of JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript, and modern language features, with experience writing maintainable, typed code.
Strong experience with at least one major front-end framework/library: React (incl. hooks, context, Suspense), Vue (2/3), or Angular.
Backend and API development experience using Node.js/Express, Python/Django/Flask, Ruby on Rails, or similar; ability to design scalable RESTful and GraphQL APIs.
Proficiency with version control using Git, branching strategies (Git Flow, trunk-based), and pull-request driven development.
Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) and automated release processes.
Familiarity with testing frameworks and methodologies: unit testing (Jest, Mocha), integration tests, and end-to-end testing tools (Cypress, Playwright).
Knowledge of performance optimization techniques: code splitting, tree shaking, lazy loading, image optimization, and caching strategies.
Practical experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker), and orchestration basics (Kubernetes) for deployment and scaling.
Database experience with both relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis) systems, including designing efficient queries and indices.
Understanding of web security best practices, secure authentication/authorization flows, and mitigation techniques for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.
Familiarity with build tools and bundlers (Webpack, Rollup, Vite), and modern CSS tooling (Sass/PostCSS, CSS-in-JS).
Experience integrating analytics, feature flags, and A/B testing platforms (Segment, Google Analytics, LaunchDarkly).
Ability to use monitoring and observability tools (Sentry, Datadog, New Relic) for incident diagnosis and performance monitoring.
Experience with code quality tooling: linters (ESLint), formatters (Prettier), and static type checks.

Soft Skills

Strong verbal and written communication to articulate technical trade-offs and present solutions to non-technical stakeholders.
Collaboration and cross-functional teamwork mindset, working effectively with product managers, designers, QA, and DevOps.
Problem-solving and analytical reasoning with a data-informed approach to decisions and prioritization.
Attention to detail and a focus on delivering high-quality, maintainable code and user experiences.
Time management, task estimation, and the ability to manage multiple priorities reliably in an agile environment.
Mentorship and coaching skills to grow teammates and contribute to a learning culture.
Product-oriented thinking: ability to balance user needs, business outcomes, and technical constraints.
Adaptability and continuous learning to keep pace with evolving front-end ecosystems and web standards.
Ownership and accountability for shipped work, production incidents, and long-term architectural decisions.
Empathy for end users and an accessibility-first mindset when building interfaces.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field, or professional certifications in web development, cloud, or security.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Software Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Information Technology
Web Development Bootcamp graduates with strong portfolio

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–7 years of professional web development experience, depending on level (mid to senior).

Preferred:

3+ years building production-grade front-end applications with modern JavaScript frameworks and at least 1–2 years working with backend APIs and cloud deployments for mid-level roles.
5+ years of full-stack or front-end engineering experience, demonstrable leadership on architecture, and a track record of delivering scalable, performant web products for senior roles.