A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, implementing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management. They may contribute to the overview of the project on the application level rather than component-level or individual programming tasks. Software developers are often still guided by lead programmers but the description also encompasses freelance software developers.

Aspects of developer's job may include:

• Software design
• Actual core implementation (programming which is often the most important portion of software development)
• Other required implementations (e.g. installation, configuration, customization, integration, data migration)
• Participation in software product definition, including business case or gap analysis
• Specification
• Requirements analysis
• Development and refinement of throw-away simulations or prototypes to confirm requirements
• Feasibility and cost–benefit analysis, including the choice of application architecture and framework, leading to thebudget and schedule for the project
• Authoring of documentation needed by users and implementation partners etc.
• Testing, including defining/supporting acceptance testing and gathering feedback from pre-release testers
• Participation in software release and post-release activities, including support for product launch evangelism (e.g. developing demonstrations and/or samples) and competitive analysis for subsequent product build/release cycles
• Maintenance