Table of Contents
Introduction
Python is today’s one core technology. It is everywhere starting from web development, e-commerce development, game development, machine learning development, artificial intelligence development and the list goes on. To compete in this ever-changing tech scenario, hiring python developers with relevant skills is crucial.
Technology is advancing much faster and their adoption is too. Python as a language is rapidly transforming the digital world causing an abundance of Python developer jobs. This leaves employers to come up with new strategies for hiring Python developers.
If you are among them, here’s a detailed checklist that will help you verify whether the candidates fit your profile.
1. Define Needs Before Hiring Python Developers
Python Programmers’ jobs are surging. Tech teams are pressuring the HR teams to hire python programmers with better skills and experience. But as a hiring member, don’t be in a rush. Before you post the ‘We are hiring Python Developers!’ advertisement it’s essential to work on the prerequisites.
Python is an excellent language with its use cases across different verticals. Hiring a dedicated python developer will help you in developing robust Python solutions. But before hiring python developers, you must have clear ideas of what achievements you want to conquer. Do you want to build a website or a game? Do you want to hire freelance python developers or hire a python development company?
You will have to follow a different process based on your requirements. For example, you can’t ask machine learning or data science interview questions to a freelance python web developer. These are some minute yet important things you must look out for before proceeding to hire python developers.
You’ll often struggle to identify what you need. So don’t be in a rush and hire someone who is incompetent. Take your time, have a clear understanding of what you need and narrow down your focus to hiring python experts with the necessary knowledge and experience.
2. Assess Candidates Through Aptitude and Technical Tests (If You Require Freshers)
If you are hiring Python programmers, an aptitude and a technical test is a must to measure the calibre of applicants. You must work with your technical teams to compile Python interview questions. You may divide the test into three parts: aptitude, verbal and logical, and technical. These tests will measure the strengths and weaknesses of python developers, communication skills and technical problem-solving skills.
3. How to Interview Before Hiring Python Developers
Before finalising your dedicated Python developers conduct interviews and interact with them. Try to grasp their understanding of technologies, their intuition and how they solve complex problems.
3.1 Assess the Technical Part
3.1.1 Tech Stack
A tech stack is the technical set of tools, libraries, frameworks, and programming languages that help build a project.
Based on your requirements python tech stack will vary. If you want to hire python web developers, your tech stack will include:
- > Front-End Development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- > Backend Development: Apache Web Server, MySQL Database.
These can be powered by the Python-Django Tech stack to build your robust web application.
Accordingly, these tech stacks will change if you want to hire python engineers for game development or ML/AI development.
Based on your requirements, ask the candidate if they are fluent with the tech stack. If not you can quickly go to the next candidate.
3.1.2 Experience Level
Experience level of the Python expert is an important factor. Ask the candidate about his work experience and what type of project he has worked on previously.
This makes it easy for you to understand how that candidate can handle complex projects. Moreover, you will get insights into how he worked on that project and his problem-solving skills.
You must hire Python developers who have up-to-date knowledge of the Python ecosystem, its libraries and frameworks.
While you interview your future python developers ask questions regarding their domain expertise.
For example, if it’s a Python web developer, ask questions regarding the front-end part (page layout, implementation of user interface, and SEO optimizations) and the backend part (execution logic, database, API, security protocols, cloud platforms, and containerization).
If you are hiring Python machine learning experts, you can ask questions on regression, classification, supervised and unsupervised machine learning, different types of clustering, etc.
You must not hire Python developers with expertise in a particular domain. It is not easy to find versatile python developers. But you must not lose hope. Even if the python developers do not possess working knowledge from different verticals, he/she must show positivity and willingness to learn when the time comes.
To solve the issue, ask the candidate what technologies he can work on and if he will be willing to change his learning direction. For instance, you can ask Python web developers whether they would like to do machine learning, data science, or AI.
From this, you will find if your prospective python developers are versatile or not. It will be a big win-win situation for as well as the developer. Always keep your eyes open to find such talent.
4. Test Programming and Problem Solving Skills
Before hiring Python developers, you must test their programming and problem-solving skills. You can use test projects to quickly assess candidates’ knowledge and ability to solve problems. Work with your python development team to assess the candidates’ working styles and thinking processes.
Some factors on how you can measure the python developers’ bright skills are:
- > Check how many test cases the candidates successfully complete.
- > If candidates succeed, ask for other ways to solve the same problems. From this, you can measure his critical thinking capabilities.
- > Evaluate the time taken by candidates to come up with a solution.
5. Verify Whether The Candidates Stay Up to Market Trends
Hire Python experts with robust coding skills. Period. But to advance your projects, you should make sure that the candidates stay up to the market trends.
One way you can do this is by visiting the candidates’ GitHub profiles to check their development, testing, and open-source activities on the platform. After that, you can conclude whether the candidate is a tech enthusiast or contributes to the open-source community and has a passion to keep updating his old projects with new technologies.
6.Check Other Qualities
Soft and interpersonal skills are equally important, so check if the candidate possesses the following qualities:
- > Interest in building challenging applications.
- > Professional mindset.
- > Great enthusiasm.
- > Social skills.
- > Excellent communication skills.
- > Proficient English speaker.
- > Honesty.
- > Curiosity.
- > Flexibility.
Python job responsibilities and basic requirements
By now we all are clear about what Python is. It is a high-level programming language for web development, scientific computing, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Hiring Python developers is a generalised term. Be specific while you are posting jobs and look for Python software developers, data analysts, machine learning engineers, scientific researchers and many others based on your need.
The responsibilities and requirements for a Python job vary based on the specific role. But some general responsibilities and basic requirements are
What are the Basic Responsibilities of a Python Developer
- > Develop and maintain Python applications
- > Write efficient and scalable code with better test results.
- > Collaborate with team members and stakeholders to design, develop, and implement Python solutions
- > Troubleshoot and debug Python code issues
- > Use Python libraries, frameworks and tools to perform data analysis, machine learning, and other tasks
- > Create and maintain technical documentation and user manuals
What Should be Your Basic Requirements Before Hiring Python Developers?
- > Proficient in Python, related tools and frameworks like Django, Flask, NumPy, and Pandas and more.
- > Basic understanding of Agile development, version control, and code review
- > Familiarity with SQL and NoSQL
- > Knowledge of web development tech stack like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- > Experience of data analysis and ML/AI tools and libraries, such as Scikit-learn and TensorFlow
- > Strong attention to details and problem-solving skills
- > Good communication skills
Some of Your Additional Requirements for a Python Developer Should be:
- > Experience with specific industry domains like finance, healthcare, or e-commerce
- > Familiarity with cloud computing platforms like AWS or Azure
- > Knowledge of different programming languages such as Java or C++
Different expertise for Python developers
Python is a versatile language. Its uses cover a wide range of fields. The following section has a list of the top job titles associated with Python. If you are hiring python developers for any of the job titles, you will learn about some of the common fields of specialization for Python developers and their features:
Python Machine Learning Engineers
Machine learning is a popular application of Python. Hire Python machine learning engineers who specialize in using Python to build ML models and AI solutions. A Python expert can develop image and voice recognition models, natural language processing models, and other AI-based applications.
Python ML engineers are familiar with popular ML frameworks like Keras, TensorFlow, and PyTorch. They have a strong understanding of linear regression algorithms, and Bayesian classifiers, and can develop neural networks using deep learning libraries.
Learn more about Machine Learning Engineers’ Roles and Responsibilities.
Python Data Engineers and ETL Pipelines
Python data engineers can build ETL pipelines to extract, transform, and load data from various sources into a single system. They use Python data science modules such as Pandas, NumPy, and SciPy to build tools for data manipulation and analysis. They also have the skills to write reliable scripts that integrate multiple data sources and databases into one system.
Hire Python developers with experience in relational and non-relational databases and who can collect, cleanse, and validate data using algorithms.
Python Programmers and DevOps
Python DevOps programmers are responsible for improving the development lifecycle of the product. These experts write scripts to automate CI/CD pipelines. They work with version control systems, configuration management tools, and automation testing frameworks to improve product quality while saving time.
Developers Building APIs with Python
Python is a better choice for creating highly scalable APIs and glueing pieces of software into a great microservice architecture. Python web developers can help orchestrate backend services and create highly scalable APIs using frameworks like Flask and Django. The PyTest framework allows developers to write effective unit and functional tests for Python APIs.
Python Web Backend Development
Python web developers work on building web services. They have a range of Python web frameworks at their disposal like Flask, Django, and Pyramid. Flask is best for small and simple projects but Django is ideal for sophisticated, multi-layer, full-stack web apps.
Python Engineers Building Desktop Apps
Python engineers can build desktop applications using Python’s standard GUI library Tkinter, or other cross-platform and platform-specific GUI toolkits like PyGUI, wxWidgets, Kivy, and PYQT. They can develop customized desktop applications for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Python Game Developers
Python game developers can create game prototypes and production-grade games using PySoy and PyGame libraries with popular game engines. Python is not typically used for game development because of its slower processing speed, but it can be used for games with simpler graphics and gameplay. Popular games like Battlefield 2, Frets on Fire, and World of Tanks were written in Python.
Average salaries for Python developers
According to a 2021 developer survey, the average salary for a Python programmer worldwide was $111,899 per year ($54 per hour), with backend engineers earning $126,499 per year ($61 per hour) and full-stack developers earning $128,150 per year ($62 per hour). Junior Python developers earned an average of $80,499 per year ($39 per hour).
But additional expertise in fields such as data science and artificial intelligence can lead to higher salaries. Here, you can get the detailed salaries of Python developers.
Get the Complete Range of Hourly Rates for Python Developers here.
Learn more about Remote Python Developer Salary here.
The table of average salaries for Python developers in different roles:
| Roles | Annual Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Python Developer | $80,499 | $39 |
| Backend Python Engineer | $126,499 | $61 |
| Full-Stack Python Developer | $128,150 | $62 |
| Data Scientist | $117,800 | $57 |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $125,300 | $60 |
| Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialist | $131,389 | $63 |
| Business Intelligence (BI) Developer | $105,000 | $51 |
| Finance Python Developer | $129,000 | $62 |
Interviewing a Python developer
When interviewing a Python developer, start with basics. Set an environment where the developer will feel comfortable replying to all your answers. Begin with simple theory questions related to Python, like the benefits of python, decorator, constructor etc.
Gradually move towards conceptual questions like how to delete a file using python, finding the Fibonacci number or the area of a rectangle. Then move on to more complex problems like using object-oriented concepts to reduce complexity or implementing bubble sort to evaluate the developer’s problem-solving skills.
The following section has a few basic questions that you can use in your interview rounds. Click here to get the top 30 Python interview questions compiled by our expert python developers.
Python Interview Questions
What are the 5 benefits of using python?
Answer:
- > Easy to learn and read with simple syntax.
- > Large standard library and third-party modules.
- > Great for data analysis, scientific computing, and AI.
- > Platform-independent with cross-language support.
- > High demand in the industry with ample job opportunities.
Python is a dynamically typed language. What do you mean by that?
Answer:
In Python, variable types are not explicitly declared, and can change dynamically during runtime based on their assigned value.
What is the difference between a list and a tuple in Python?
Answer:
A list is mutable, meaning it can be modified, while a tuple is immutable and cannot be changed once created.
What is the purpose of virtual environments in Python?
Answer:
Virtual environments allow developers to create isolated Python environments with specific packages and dependencies, avoiding version conflicts and ensuring reproducibility.
What is a decorator in Python?
Answer:
A decorator is a function that takes another function and extends its functionality without modifying the original code. Decorators are often used for logging, authentication, and other cross-cutting concerns.
How is memory managed in Python?
Answer:
Python uses automatic memory management, known as garbage collection. Objects that are no longer referenced are automatically deleted from memory.
What is the difference between the range() and xrange() functions in Python 2.x?
Answer:
range() returns a list of numbers, while xrange() returns an iterator that generates the numbers on the fly, saving memory and improving performance. In Python 3.x, range() behaves like xrange() and returns an iterator.
Wrapping Up
Python is a cutting-edge programming language that is used for cutting-edge technologies such as AI, machine learning, and data science. And with these technologies booming, the answer to the question “are Python developers in demand” has become quite simple.
However, employers are always on the edge to recruit the best talent. And they need to strategize their recruitment to test candidates as per the technical trends and their evolution. This checklist will help such employers to identify their needs for hiring Python developers.
