Senior backend python developer

A) Technical Skills (MUST-HAVE)

Python Expertise

• 5+ years Python experience (ask for concrete projects)
• FastAPI production experience (show me your last FastAPI project)
• Masters async/await patterns (explain how asyncio works)
• Uses type hints (show code examples)
• Performance optimization experience (what did you optimize, how?)

Voice AI & Real-Time Systems

• VoCode framework experience (or LiveKit, Pipecat - show projects)
• WebSocket programming (have you built bidirectional streaming?)
• STT/TTS/LLM integration (which APIs have you used?)
• Low-latency design (<1s response time - how do you achieve this?)
• Audio processing understanding (codecs, streaming)

Telephony & Twilio

• Twilio API integration (have you built Twilio Voice projects?)
• SIP protocol understanding (nice to have)
• Audio codec knowledge (G.711, Opus)

Database & Caching

• PostgreSQL expert (advanced queries, indexing, JSONB)
• Redis for sessions & caching (concrete projects?)
• Multi-tenancy database design (how do you structure this?)
• Migration strategies (Alembic experience)

Architecture & Production Experience

• Built production system with 10,000+ users (show me the system)
• Solved scaling challenges (concrete examples?)
• On-call experience (what breaks at 3 AM?)
• Understands microservices vs monolith tradeoffs
• Event-driven architecture (RabbitMQ, SQS)

B) Soft Skills & Leadership

• Can explain technical decisions clearly (not just "this is good")
• Team leadership experience (have you coached juniors?)
• Code review culture (how do you give feedback?)
• Values documentation (show me your docs)
• Understands business requirements (not just code)

C) RED FLAGS (DON'T HIRE!)

• Can't explain async/await clearly
• No production system experience
• "I'll learn VoCode on the job" (without foundation)
• Defensive during code reviews
• No GitHub portfolio with real-time work
• "Microservices for everything" without justification