Web Developer Job Description

A Web Developer turns a design, a content plan and a set of business rules into a working website or browser-based application, then keeps it running. In a software engineering organization the job usually sits on a product team next to designers, back-end engineers and QA, though a web developer may also work alone for an agency client or a university department and own the whole site from DNS record to footer.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics splits the work into specialties. Back-end web developers, in BLS's description, are responsible for the overall technical construction of a site: they create its basic framework and make sure it functions as expected. Front-end web developers create the technical features for the site's look, building the layout and the pieces a visitor actually touches. Webmasters maintain and update existing sites and test for errors such as broken links. A generalist hired under the plain "web developer" title may do some of all three.

On the front end, a typical week means writing semantic HTML, styling it with CSS (Flexbox, Grid, custom properties, container queries), and adding behavior in JavaScript or TypeScript. Component frameworks carry much of that load; O*NET's technology list for the occupation lists React, Vue.js and Bootstrap among its web platform development tools. The developer also owns the build: bundling, code splitting, image formats and caching headers.

On the server side, the same developer, or a teammate, writes the routes and API endpoints that log users in, take payments, save form data and render pages. That means a server language and framework (Node.js, PHP with Laravel, Python with Django, Ruby on Rails, Java with Spring), a relational database such as PostgreSQL or MySQL, and the security work that comes with any public URL: input validation, session handling, dependency patching and a sane content security policy.

Performance is measured, not guessed. Google's Core Web Vitals give teams field metrics to watch, and the set has changed: Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay, and Google ended support for FID on September 9, 2024. A developer chasing a poor INP score profiles long tasks in Chrome DevTools, defers third-party scripts and breaks up heavy event handlers.

Accessibility belongs in the definition of done. That means real headings and landmarks, labeled form fields, visible focus states, adequate color contrast and keyboard paths through every menu and modal, checked with a screen reader rather than only an automated scanner.

Shipping closes the loop. Code goes through Git pull requests and review, runs through a CI pipeline, and deploys to a host or cloud platform. After release the developer watches error logs and analytics, fixes what broke, and starts on the next ticket.

There is no license for this work, and the entry routes are wide. As a rough guide, the common path is a computer science or information systems bachelor's degree, but people also arrive from community college programs, short certificate courses, graphic design, journalism and IT support. What gets someone hired is evidence: a portfolio of live sites or public repositories that shows clean markup, sensible JavaScript and a working back end.

Core skills to build first:

• HTML and CSS at a level where you can build any layout from a design file without a framework, and make it hold up from a 320-pixel phone to a wide monitor.
• JavaScript fundamentals (scope, closures, promises, async/await, the DOM and the event loop), then TypeScript.
• One component framework in depth, such as React or Vue, plus its routing and state patterns.
• SQL and one relational database. BLS notes that many employers want web developers to understand languages such as JavaScript or SQL in addition to HTML.
• Git, pull-request etiquette, and the command line.
• One server stack well enough to build authentication, a REST or GraphQL API and a deployment.

Skills that separate candidates:

• Accessibility practice: WCAG success criteria, ARIA used sparingly and correctly, testing with NVDA or VoiceOver.
• Performance work: reading a Lighthouse report, profiling long tasks, image and font strategy, caching.
• Security basics from the OWASP material: cross-site scripting, injection, CSRF, and secrets handling.
• Judgment with AI coding assistants: knowing when a suggested function is wrong, insecure or pulls in a dependency nobody needs.

Credentials. None are required for the job. Two that map to real web work are the Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) certification from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), for developers who want to own accessibility, and AWS Certified Developer - Associate from Amazon Web Services, for those who deploy to AWS.

Typical progression. As a rough guide, a junior developer spends the first one to two years building features to spec under review. A mid-level developer, often around three to five years in, takes features from ticket to production alone and starts reviewing others' code. Senior developers set front-end architecture, choose frameworks, mentor, and answer for performance and accessibility across a product. From there the paths split: staff or principal engineer, engineering manager, or a move into adjacent roles such as front-end platform, developer experience or solutions architecture.

Freelance and agency work. Agency developers trade depth for range, often juggling several client sites on WordPress, Shopify themes or a headless CMS. Freelancers add sales, scoping and contracts to the job; a fixed-scope proposal and a maintenance retainer on every shipped site are sound habits to build early.

The newest federal numbers arrived on August 27, 2026, when BLS released its 2025-35 employment projections. For web developers specifically, BLS projects employment rising from 87,400 in 2025 to 90,600 in 2035, a 4 percent gain of about 3,300 jobs. O*NET lists about 5,300 openings a year on average for the occupation.

BLS ties the growth to online commerce. Its Occupational Outlook Handbook says employment of web developers and digital designers is projected to grow as e-commerce continues to expand, with demand expected to rise as retailers add online offerings and try to compete in the online marketplace. The same passage carries the caveat every job seeker should read: improving web development tools and increasing use of artificial intelligence for web development may soften employment growth. BLS adds that these tools may make these workers more productive and may also allow some workers in other occupations to do basic web development tasks.

That second point is the practical one for a job seeker. A portfolio built only from basic pages and templates shows the kind of task BLS says other workers may pick up. A portfolio that shows custom application logic, integrations with payment, identity and inventory systems, performance under real traffic, security review, accessibility conformance and the cleanup of hastily generated code shows the parts of the job that sit well beyond basic tasks.

Accessibility rules put dates on the calendar for public-sector work. In April 2024 the Justice Department adopted rules under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act that require state and local government websites and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. An interim final rule effective April 20, 2026 pushed the compliance dates back without changing the substance: the rule now sets April 26, 2027 for state and local governments serving 50,000 or more people, and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special district governments. State and local government agencies, and the contractors that build their sites, now have fixed dates to plan remediation, audits and vendor contract language around.

Pay within the occupation differs by industry. The same BLS occupation spans a solo developer at a small advertising shop and a front-end engineer at a software publisher, and BLS publishes separate medians for each industry (see the FAQ below). Self-employment is a real track too: BLS notes that some web developers and digital designers are self-employed, alongside those in computer systems design, publishing, management consulting and advertising.

For someone entering the field now, worthwhile things to build are depth in one front-end framework plus enough back-end skill to ship a full feature, documented accessibility and performance work, comfort reviewing machine-written code rather than only producing it, and working knowledge of WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the standard the ADA rule names.

Dear Ms. Alvarez,

I am applying for the Web Developer position on the digital services team at Harborview County. I have spent four years building and maintaining public-facing sites, most recently as the sole developer at a regional parks foundation, and I would like to bring that work to a county that serves residents who depend on its website for permits, payments and meeting notices.

At the foundation I rebuilt our donation and event registration flow in React with a Laravel API behind it. The old form lost entries whenever the payment processor timed out, so I added server-side validation, idempotent payment calls and a retry queue. Complaints to our front desk about duplicate charges stopped within the first month. I also moved the site from a shared host to a container deployment with automated tests on every pull request, which let our volunteer designers preview changes before anything went live.

Accessibility is the part of the job I care most about. I ran a full audit of our 200-page site with NVDA, VoiceOver and keyboard-only testing, wrote up every barrier against the WCAG success criteria, and fixed them over two quarters: real headings, labeled fields, focus management in our modal dialogs, and captions on every video. I would welcome the chance to help Harborview plan and document its own conformance work.

I use AI coding tools daily, and I treat their output as a first draft that needs review for security and for the edge cases our residents will hit.

My portfolio and code samples are at the link below. I would be glad to walk your team through any of them.

Sincerely, Jordan Okafor