.NET Developer Skills: What to Look for When Hiring in 2026

1. Mastery of C# and .NET Fundamentals

Here’s what changed: five years ago, you might have hired developers with .NET Framework experience and called it sufficient. Today, that approach will leave you with outdated skills and compatibility issues.

A skilled .NET developer must demonstrate proficiency with modern C# and the unified .NET SDK. In their profession, they write asynchronous code using async/await patterns and handle complex data queries with LINQ. Moreover, they can use modern language features, such as pattern matching and nullable reference types.

When evaluating backend .NET developer skills, look for experience with .NET 8 or .NET 10. These are the current supported standards. Developers still focused on .NET Framework 4.x or Visual Basic are working with legacy technology that Microsoft no longer recommends for new projects.

2. Proficiency with .NET Web Technologies

Once you’ve confirmed their foundation skills, it’s time to focus on web development capabilities.

Modern .NET web developer skills center on ASP.NET Core, which has replaced older technologies such as Web Forms and WCF. Microsoft no longer recommends Web Forms after the end of support for .NET Framework, and WCF isn’t available in modern .NET at all.

For frontend development, many .NET teams now use Blazor instead of traditional JavaScript frameworks. Developers with Blazor experience create interactive user interfaces using C#.

Also, a competent .NET programmer builds RESTful APIs using ASP.NET Core’s routing and middleware pipeline. They implement model binding and validation, and create custom exception handlers for production applications.

When conducting a .NET developer skills assessment, ask candidates about their API documentation practices. Experienced developers use Swagger/OpenAPI to document endpoints and implement JWT or OAuth2 authentication for secure access.

3. Understanding of .NET MAUI for Mobile and Desktop Apps

Another technology shift worth understanding: Xamarin.Forms support ended in May 2024, and Microsoft replaced it with .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI).

MAUI represents Microsoft’s current approach to cross-platform development. .NET developers use it to build applications for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows from a single C# codebase. Many teams now pair MAUI with Blazor Hybrid, which lets developers reuse the same C# and Blazor interface across mobile, desktop, and web.

What does this mean for your hiring process? Developers with recent MAUI experience are typically mid-level or senior, as the technology requires an understanding of both mobile development patterns and .NET architecture.

If you see Xamarin on a resume, confirm they’ve successfully migrated to MAUI or are actively learning it. Legacy Xamarin skills alone won’t support modern cross-platform requirements.

4. Familiarity with Cloud and Azure Services

Moving forward, let’s examine how modern .NET developer skills combine with knowledge of cloud platforms.

Before 2020, .NET development meant Windows-only applications deployed on-premise. These applications were typically monolithic, meaning all functionality existed in a single deployable unit. Here, .NET developers struggled to orchestrate multiple services and manage configuration across environments.

Microsoft introduced .NET Aspire at the Build 2024 conference, and it has since matured into the established cloud-native stack for .NET. Aspire handles service orchestration and ships a monitoring dashboard out of the box, built on OpenTelemetry. .NET developers use it to manage service dependencies and run local versions of complex cloud architectures.

Beyond Aspire, Azure integration skills have become standard for enterprise .NET development. Programmers work with:

Depending on the architecture of your system, you may also look for candidates with experience in Azure Service Bus, Blob Storage, SQL Database, or Azure Container Instances. These are not required for all roles but can be valuable in distributed or data-heavy environments.

Cloud knowledge separates juniors from senior .NET developer skills. In 2026, a programmer who can only build monolithic applications deployed to single servers lacks the skills needed for modern enterprise development.

5. Working with AI and ML Integration

Finally, let’s address the emerging .NET skills in AI and machine learning development.

Until recently, AI in .NET mostly meant calling external services like Azure Cognitive APIs. With .NET 8 and new AI orchestration libraries, programmers can now build and run AI-first applications entirely using existing C# and .NET expertise.

The current .NET AI stack centers on Microsoft.Extensions.AI, a common layer for working across different AI providers, and the Microsoft Agent Framework for building AI agents. The Agent Framework is the successor to Semantic Kernel, and it has built-in support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which connects models to external tools and data sources such as databases and APIs. For classic machine learning and Azure-hosted models, developers still use ML.NET and Azure AI Foundry.

In addition, it’s becoming increasingly common to see .NET developers with hands-on experience working with vector databases, such as Milvus, Qdrant, Pinecone, or Azure AI Search, for optimizing data retrieval.

Many teams also pair .NET specialists with AI engineers to integrate popular models, such as OpenAI, Mistral, Cohere, or Meta’s LLaMA, into their .NET applications.

AI skills are becoming a common expectation across .NET positions, and the trend is accelerating. You can already start looking for AI experience in .NET developer skills if you’re building with generative AI and large or small language models and prefer to keep everything inside the Microsoft stack.