The phrase ".NET developer" spans two eras. If you plan to hire dot NET developers in India, first decide whether you need someone to keep a .NET Framework application alive on Windows servers or someone to build on modern .NET, ASP.NET Core and Azure. Then verify the skills that era actually demands: EF Core, API design, cloud services and testing.
Framework maintainer or modern .NET engineer?
.NET Framework 4.8.x still runs a great deal of business software, from ASP.NET MVC 5 sites to WCF services and Web Forms portals. It remains supported as part of Windows but receives no new features. Modern .NET is cross-platform, ships a new version every November and alternates long-term and standard support releases. .NET 10 is the current long-term support release, and support for .NET 8 ends in November 2026, which is why so many teams are planning upgrades right now. Hiring the wrong era is costly in both directions: a cloud-native engineer may push for a rewrite you cannot afford, while a Framework specialist may extend the life of code that should be moving.
The Framework maintainer
Knows IIS, web.config transforms, Entity Framework 6, WCF bindings, Windows authentication and the quirks of older NuGet packages. Valuable when stability is the goal and a rewrite is not yet justified.
Signs you are talking to one
Their recent work mentions Visual Studio deployments to on-premises servers, SOAP integrations and Web Forms, with little discussion of containers or CI pipelines.
The modern .NET engineer
Builds with ASP.NET Core, minimal APIs or controllers, EF Core, dependency injection, containers and cloud services, and is comfortable running code on Linux.
Signs you are talking to one
They discuss upgrading between recent .NET versions, OpenTelemetry or Application Insights, health checks, deployment pipelines and how their services behave under load.
Many products need a little of both. If that describes yours, tell us what the system runs on today and we can help you decide which profile to recruit first.
Skills to verify in a modern .NET developer
ASP.NET Core and API design
Ask for a small API with validation, consistent error responses using ProblemDetails, OpenAPI documentation, authentication with JWT bearer tokens or OpenID Connect, and the built-in rate limiting middleware. Probe async/await habits: blocking on .Result or .Wait() in request code is an old mistake that still shows up and can starve the thread pool under load.
EF Core
EF Core is productive and easy to misuse. Strong candidates explain tracking versus AsNoTracking for read-only queries, how Include can explode into a large join and when split queries help, how they spot N+1 patterns in logs, and why raw SQL should always be parameterized. Ask how they manage migrations across environments without surprises on release day.
Azure and cloud operations
For Azure-hosted products, look for hands-on use of App Service or Container Apps, Azure Functions for event-driven work, Service Bus for messaging, Key Vault and managed identities for secrets, and Entra ID for authentication. Someone who stores connection strings in source control has not done this for real.
Testing that matches the architecture
Expect xUnit or NUnit for unit tests and integration tests built on WebApplicationFactory, ideally with Testcontainers spinning up a real database instead of an in-memory substitute that behaves differently.
Migration: where the two profiles meet
The most valuable .NET hires can move an old system forward without stopping the business. Ask how they would approach these situations:
- Class libraries and MVC apps: using Microsoft's upgrade tooling, retargeting shared libraries first and upgrading one project at a time.
- WCF services: CoreWCF for a like-for-like move, or a redesign to REST or gRPC when clients can change.
- Web Forms: there is no direct port, so expect a screen-by-screen rebuild, often in Blazor or a JavaScript front end, behind a shared entry point.
- Large monoliths: the strangler pattern, where new services take over one capability at a time. Our guide to migrating a legacy monolith to microservices covers the sequencing.
If hosting is moving at the same time, plan the infrastructure work alongside the code. Our article on Azure migration services explains what to settle first.
How to hire dot NET developers in India: a practical loop
- Name the era in the job post. State the .NET version, hosting and whether migration is part of the role.
- Review real code. Ask for a walkthrough of a service they built, focusing on decisions rather than syntax.
- Set a paid exercise in a copy of your solution: one endpoint, one EF Core query to optimize and one integration test.
- Discuss an incident. How did they diagnose a memory leak, a deadlock or a slow query in production?
- Confirm continuity and overlap. The assessed developer should be the one who joins, with agreed overlap hours against your time zone.
If a scoped project suits you better than recruitment, iJurug Soft handles .NET builds and upgrades with senior engineers on every engagement, fixed milestones and long-term support. You can read how we think about choosing a .NET development company in India.
Frequently asked questions
Should a new project use .NET Framework or modern .NET?
Modern .NET, almost always. Choose .NET Framework only when a dependency you cannot replace still requires it.
Do .NET developers need Azure experience?
Only if you host on Azure. ASP.NET Core runs equally well on AWS, Google Cloud or Kubernetes, so test for the platform you actually use.
Is Blazor a reasonable choice for the front end?
For internal tools and teams that are strongest in C#, Blazor can be productive. For public, SEO-sensitive sites, weigh it carefully against established JavaScript frameworks.
Can I hire dot NET developers in India just for the .NET 8 upgrade?
Yes, and with .NET 8 support ending in November 2026 it is a sensible, bounded engagement. Scope it as an inventory of projects and NuGet dependencies, a move to .NET 10, a green test suite at each step and a short record of every breaking change handled.
Planning a .NET hire or an upgrade before support deadlines bite? Share your current stack through our contact form or write to info@ijurugsoft.com, and we will reply with a recommended path and a clear quote.