Description
Java Full Stack Developer — Skills and Progression
- Role overview: Build end-to-end web applications using Java on the backend and modern front-end frameworks on the client.
- Core backend: Strong Java SE/EE fundamentals, object‑oriented design, and proficiency with Spring Boot for RESTful services.
- APIs and integration: Design and secure REST/GraphQL APIs, handle serialization, versioning, and contract testing.
- Front‑end skills: Competence in React, Angular, or Vue; component architecture, state management, and responsive UI patterns.
- Data and persistence: Relational and NoSQL modeling, JPA/Hibernate, query optimization, and transaction management.
- Concurrency and performance: Multithreading, concurrency control, JVM tuning, GC understanding, and profiling for latency and throughput.
- Testing and quality: Unit, integration, contract, and end‑to‑end tests; TDD practices and static analysis/linting.
- DevOps and CI/CD: Containerization with Docker, orchestration basics (Kubernetes), automated pipelines, and blue/green or canary deployments.
- Cloud and platform: Deploying to AWS/Azure/GCP, using managed services, and designing for scalability and resilience.
- Security: Authentication/authorization (OAuth2, JWT), secure coding, secrets management, and dependency vulnerability scanning.
- Architecture patterns: Microservices, event‑driven systems, domain‑driven design, and API gateway patterns.
- Observability: Distributed tracing, structured logging, metrics, and alerting to diagnose production issues.
- Scalability and reliability: Caching strategies, circuit breakers, rate limiting, and capacity planning.
- Soft skills: System design, mentoring, code reviews, cross‑team collaboration, and stakeholder communication.
- 3–5 years focus: Master Spring Boot, front‑end framework, CI pipelines, testing, and service integration.
- 6–12 years focus: Lead microservices design, platform automation, performance tuning, and team architecture decisions.
- 13–20 years focus: Drive platform strategy, cross‑cloud architecture, governance, and mentoring large engineering organizations.
