Find the best Microsoft SharePoint Developer jobs

What does a SharePoint developer do?

SharePoint is built on the Microsoft platform. So it should be no surprise that becoming a SharePoint developer would require an understanding of not just web technologies and software development, but also some proficiency in the .NET framework as a baseline like C# or ASP.NET. Fortunately, it is also one of the most vibrant developer communities online, so getting up to speed on SharePoint is a breeze because of the extensive documentation available from Microsoft and the SharePoint designer and developer community. Microsoft also provides extensive training courses and self-paced content to learn at your own pace.

The SharePoint framework, also known as SPFx, enables client-side SharePoint development for web parts or web pages like Single Page Apps or SPAs and allows easy integration of site content and data. Since it has also evolved closely with the Microsoft Office productivity portfolio, you can use SharePoint to extend Microsoft Teams functionality. As a result, once you become proficient in SharePoint development, you can take up assignments for various internal-facing and customer-facing engagements.

Let's understand the different activities you would participate in as a SharePoint developer.

Create and customize mobile-friendly responsive pages

The SPFx framework enables responsive layouts by design. As a result, you can now build and customize fully responsive web parts or pages in SPFx, knowing that the browser would render these components with native HTML support. Understanding how templates work in web development would also be beneficial.

Understand how to consume APIs within SPFx components

The SPFx framework allows you to consume REST APIs and use popular scripting frameworks like Angular or React. Having a working knowledge of databases, SQL, and JSON/XML data handling would also be helpful. In addition, this approach extends your options to integrate with other Microsoft products like Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Graph for authentication and Microsoft 365-based data sets.

Create custom web parts and add-ins for Microsoft products

You can use SPFx web parts to create custom apps, extensions, and web parts for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office tools as web parts. This extensible approach allows you to create web parts as part of a web application and as a custom extension for any existing Office product.

What skills do I need to become a SharePoint developer?

Depending on the version of SharePoint (On-premise/Online), the skill set could vary depending on your client's needs. However, as described below, a standard set of skills would help you pick up any engagement requiring SharePoint development.

First, you must understand how and where SharePoint is being used. Since it has several applications across the Microsoft product portfolio, it would be beneficial to acquaint yourself with how Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams can be extended using the SharePoint framework. You would also need to understand how the browser renders a SharePoint page and how you could tweak it using client-side Javascript. As mentioned, the Microsoft developer documentation takes you through the paces of setting up your development environment and introduces you to common use cases here, so learning SharePoint from the ground up would be a breeze.

To make things simpler, Microsoft also provides extensive support on how to publish your SharePoint solutions to the SharePoint marketplace. These marketplaces allow other clients to discover your work and deploy them to their Microsoft 365 instance. As a result, your work can become a public portfolio that showcases your SharePoint experience.

The primary skills you would need to pick up to become a SharePoint developer are listed below, in no particular order.

• Proficiency in at least one Javascript framework
• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and the .Net framework
• Working knowledge of how to consume REST APIs
• Understanding how databases work with some SQL experience
• Awareness of different content management systems and content types
• Understanding how Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office work

You should also be able to show maturity and exposure as an experienced developer with the following skills:

• Being able to create unit and automated test workflows
• Understanding the version control lifecycle in a git-based environment
• Understanding how web packages work

What are the core SharePoint developer responsibilities?

Regardless of the use case, the following responsibilities would always be the preferred requirements in a SharePoint developer description.

• Working experience in building SPFx web parts, Single Page Applications (SPA), or SharePoint sites
• Debugging and troubleshooting client-side rendering and security issues
• Working experience in building SharePoint add-ins
• Knowledge of building extensions for Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams
• Proficient in Javascript, HTML, and CSS
• Prior knowledge of any Javascript framework
• Prior experience using the Visual Studio environment

Should I get a SharePoint degree or certification?

The official Microsoft developer portal for Sharepoint has not released any new certifications for the latest version of the SharePoint framework. However, in the Microsoft developer community, it does help to obtain a Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification to demonstrate an understanding of the Microsoft 365 platform, which could give you an edge over other SharePoint developers.