How to vet a Django developer
Strong Django developers know the framework's conventions well and also know where to step outside them. Ask candidates how they structure apps by business domain, where they put business logic, how they use the ORM efficiently with select_related and prefetch_related, and why a custom user model matters from day one. These choices decide whether a Django project stays pleasant to work on after its first year.
For API work, check experience with Django REST Framework or Django Ninja, authentication, permissions and pagination. For background work, look for Celery or similar queues with retries and monitoring. Experience customizing the Django admin is valuable too, since it often saves weeks on internal tools. Our Django development page describes the conventions we follow on client projects.
Finally, ask about upgrades and production operations: moving between Django versions, handling migrations on large tables, configuring settings securely per environment and diagnosing slow pages with profiling tools. Developers who have supported a live Django product answer with specific examples.
- Organizes code into domain apps with clear business logic.
- Uses the ORM efficiently and avoids repeated queries.
- Builds secure APIs with proper permissions.
- Runs background jobs with retries and monitoring.
- Has upgraded Django versions in production.
- Writes tests with pytest-django and factories.
Interview questions we use for Django developers
We ask questions that reflect real Django projects: data modeling, query performance, APIs, admin customization and upgrades. Candidates review small code samples, explain the queries Django would generate and describe how they would structure a feature in an existing codebase without breaking conventions the team relies on.
Good answers show that the candidate understands what the ORM does under the hood and when to drop to raw SQL, keeps views thin, and treats migrations with care on large production tables. We also value awareness of Django's built-in security protections and the settings that can weaken them.
- How would you find and fix an N+1 query problem in a Django view?
- Why should a new project start with a custom user model?
- Where do you put business logic: models, views, services or signals?
- How do you run a migration on a very large table without downtime?
- How would you structure permissions in Django REST Framework for multiple roles?
- Which settings do you check before deploying Django to production?
Onboarding a Django developer in the first two weeks
In week one, the developer sets up the project locally, reviews models and migrations, API structure, background jobs and settings for each environment, and runs the test suite. They fix small bugs and review recent pull requests, which reveals team conventions quickly. A short written note on risks, such as slow queries or outdated dependencies, helps the team plan improvements.
In week two, they deliver a feature end to end with tests, often including an admin customization or API endpoint. Teams comparing frameworks can read our Django vs Flask comparison and Django vs Laravel comparison, which explain where Django's batteries-included approach saves the most time.
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