Timeline: 2023 - Present · Category: 💼 Professional

Since 2023, a major focus of my work has been maintaining, modernizing, and improving existing .NET backend systems used in production environments.

This ongoing work represents the core of my professional experience in backend development.

This includes upgrading legacy applications, consolidating services, improving maintainability, and automating recurring backend processes.

The work spans API development, database refactoring, job automation, monitoring, and system modernization while continuously improving code structure and modularity.

Core Responsibilities

  • Upgrading applications to modern .NET versions
  • Refactoring legacy utilities and backend services
  • Consolidating standalone tools into centralized services
  • Improving deployment and maintenance workflows
  • Automating recurring backend tasks
  • Improving logging and system observability
  • Increasing modularity and maintainability of codebases

Modular Architecture & Code Structure

A strong focus during modernization work was improving code structure and modularity to make systems easier to maintain and extend.

Key improvements:

  • Separation of concerns across application layers
  • Modular service and data access components
  • Dependency Injection usage across services
  • Reusable service abstractions
  • Reduction of tightly coupled components
  • Easier feature extensions and testing possibilities

Many utilities were refactored to follow structured backend patterns instead of monolithic logic.

MVC & Backend Design Patterns

Several applications followed or were migrated towards MVC and structured backend patterns.

Work included:

  • Controller-based request handling
  • Separation of business logic into services
  • Repository or data-access abstraction layers
  • Clean separation between UI, logic, and data layers
  • Improved routing and API endpoint structure

These changes improved maintainability and reduced side effects between application components.

Utility Consolidation & Job Automation

One major task involved handling more than 30 standalone utilities that previously ran independently.

To improve maintainability and monitoring, these utilities were consolidated into a centralized backend service.

Implementation Highlights:

  • Creation of a centralized microservice
  • Job execution handled via Hangfire
  • Scheduled and background tasks unified
  • Database logging added for job monitoring
  • Failure tracking and retry handling
  • Removal of manual execution processes

This significantly improved transparency and maintenance.

Technology & Stack Experience

Backend Development

  • C# and modern .NET ecosystem
  • ASP.NET Core applications
  • REST API design and implementation
  • JSON-based API communication
  • YAML/OpenAPI API documentation

Database & Data Access

  • Entity Framework & EF Core
  • Database migrations and schema adjustments
  • Query optimization and refactoring
  • Data structure modernization

Job Processing & Automation

  • Hangfire background job processing
  • Scheduled tasks
  • Automated recurring workflows
  • Job retry and monitoring strategies

Logging & Monitoring

  • Centralized logging with NLog
  • Database-based job logging
  • Error monitoring and diagnostics
  • Runtime behavior analysis

Modernization & Refactoring

  • Migration of applications to newer .NET versions
  • Dependency cleanup and modernization
  • Refactoring legacy code structures
  • Improving maintainability of utilities
  • Removal of obsolete components

Development Impact

The modernization and consolidation work resulted in:

  • Reduced operational complexity
  • Improved reliability of background processes
  • Easier monitoring of system jobs
  • Simplified deployment workflows
  • Reduced maintenance overhead
  • Better structured and extensible systems

Learnings

  • Handling legacy systems pragmatically
  • Incrementally modernizing production software
  • Designing maintainable backend services
  • Structuring background job processing
  • Improving operational visibility
  • Applying modular architecture principles in existing systems

Current Direction

Ongoing focus areas include:

  • Further backend modernization
  • Automation of recurring processes
  • API improvements and maintainability
  • Scalable backend architecture patterns
  • Continuous improvement of modular backend structures

Tech Stack

C# · .NET 6/8 · ASP.NET Core · Entity Framework Core · Hangfire · NLog · SQL Server · REST APIs · Azure DevOps