Python Developer Hiring Guide

Python Job Description

The first step to hiring a great Python developer is to build a clear and concise job description. The job description should describe the exact type of candidates you're searching for, the desired skills and knowledge, the benefits your company will be providing them, and the daily duties and responsibilities of the role. Also, you should build a case of why the top Python developers should work for your organization. Here is our Python developer job description template, we're providing it free of ownership so you can copy it and use it as you see fit.

Python Job Description Template:

This job description is based on actual job descriptions we use and have used in the past to hire dozens of top Python developers in the United States and Latin America. Feel free to use it as you'd like and let us know how it goes.

Company Introduction

The first part of this Python developer job description includes a brief introduction to your business. It provides candidates a high-level understanding of what your company does. Some of the things it includes are location, a summary of what you're looking for, who are your clients and customers and describe the products and services you serve. This is our company's description:

FullStack Labs is a leading software consultancy seeking creative and skilled developers to join our fast-growing team. Our mission is to design and develop technology that improves the lives of its users while providing an exceptionally high level of service to our clients.

We are looking for experienced developers who want to be part of a fast-paced, dynamic environment, where everyone’s opinions and efforts are valued. We hire outstanding professionals and give them the opportunity to thrive in a collaborative atmosphere that values learning, growth, and hard work.

Our team of 100+ professionals is distributed across our three offices in California, Washington D.C., and Barranquilla Colombia. Additionally, many of our team members who aren’t located near one of our offices, work remotely. We provide a highly competitive compensation and benefits package with health insurance, overtime pay, PTO, etc.

If you have the desire to be a part of an exciting, challenging and rapidly-growing software development consultancy, and if you are passionate about software development and creating the finest apps in the marketplace, please apply below.

Job Description/What you'll be doing

Next, the job description provides an overview of the position's day-to-day activities. Many of the examples in the tasks listed below are regular activities that a Python developer is expected to perform. Evaluate your requirements and edit this template according to your needs.

• Work as part of a small team, which will include other developers, a project manager, a QA professional, and a designer.
• Complete two-week sprints and participate in sprint retrospectives and daily standups.
• Assist with building estimates.
• Interface with clients via Slack, Zoom, and email.
• Track your time throughout the day using Toggl.
• Work with modern tools including Jira, Slack, GitHub, Google Docs, etc.
• Be part of a community of developers that share knowledge and help each other as problems arise.
• Follow FullStack's detailed development process.
  

Requirements

Next, we summarize what we're looking for in a Python developer and describe the requirements of the position. Many of these elements would transfer well to general Python developer job descriptions, review them, and adjust them according to your company and your specific search.

• 3+ years of professional software development experience. 5+ years preferred but not required.
• 2+ years of professional experience working with Python. 
• Meaningful experience working on large, complex systems.
• A four-year college degree is required.
• Ability to take extreme ownership over your work. Every day is a challenge to ensure you are performing to the expectations you and your team have agreed upon, both in regards to estimates and to the general process.
• Ability to identify with the goals of FullStack's clients, and dedicate yourself to delivering on the commitments you and your team make to them.
• An understanding of best practices and a commitment to following them.
• Ability to work through new and difficult issues and contribute to libraries as needed.
• Ability to create and maintain continuous integration and delivery of applications.
• A positive mindset and a can-do attitude.
• Forensic attention to detail.
• You’re passionate about software development...it’s not just your career, it’s your hobby. You’re constantly striving to learn new things and improve. You follow industry news, regularly tinker with new technologies, and read books and blogs to keep your skills current.
• Ability to consistently work 40 hours per week.
• Ability to be productive working remotely
  

Benefits

Here, we describe all of the benefits that talented Python developers will enjoy once they join our company. What sets you apart from other employers? What does your compensation and benefits plan look like?

We’re a medium-sized team that’s growing fast, so everyone that joins has a direct impact on the direction and success of the company. Today’s hires will be tomorrow’s leaders. We strive for an open, flat, collaborative, work-hard-play-hard environment. Some of the benefits are:

All Locations

• Competitive Salary
• Overtime pay
• 100% remote work, now and post COVID.  
• The ability to work with leading startups and Fortune 500 companies in the USA. 
  

USA Benefits

• Health, dental, vision insurance 
• 401k w/ 4% match
• PTO banking 
• Profit-Sharing Bonus
  

Colombia Benefits

• Prepaid Medical
• English Classes
• All standard government-required benefits
  

Wrapping it All Up

Being a software consultant is a fun, challenging, and rewarding career choice for developers. Your contributions are highly valued by clients, and the work you do often has a direct and significant impact on clients’ businesses.

You will have the chance to work on a variety of projects for our incredible clients, which will help you quickly improve as a consultant and software developer. You will get to work with modern languages and frameworks alongside some of the best developers in the world.

So if you have the desire to be a part of an exciting, challenging, and rapidly-growing software development consultancy, and if you are passionate about software development and consulting, please apply.

Hopefully, you’ve found this helpful. To see examples of our complete job postings, please visit: https://jobs.lever.co/fullstacklabs

Python Technical Job Application & Screening Process

It's likely you'll receive hundreds of applicants once you post your job posting. Out of these applicants, only a handful will be qualified. It's important you have a screening process in place to make it easier for your team to go through and qualify/unqualify all candidates. We recommend having candidates fill an online job application and provide some basic information about themselves.

Python developer screening questions

To quickly sift through hundreds of job applications, we favor having applicants respond to the following questions when they apply:

• What country are you located in?
• What city are you located in?
• How many years of full-time, paid software development experience do you have, after graduating college? (Please do not count part-time work, internships, or work while in college. Only count work after graduating college)
• Do you have a four-year college degree? (A four-year college degree is required for this position. )
• Please list your college degree and institution.
• What is your current salary? (USD for the USA, Colombian Peso for Colombia)
• What is your desired salary? (USD for the USA, Colombian Peso for Colombia)
• Are you currently a contractor or a salaried employee?
• How soon can you start?
  

The following questions all focus on technical skills. We like to ask for their level of experience across a broad spectrum of programming languages to help us understand their complete skill set, not just their Python ability.

What is your level of experience with:

• Level of experience with React?
• Level of experience with JS ecosystem and modern build tools?
• Level of experience with CSS?
• Level of experience with HTML?
• Level of experience with Ruby on Rails?
• Level of experience with React Native?
• Level of experience with node.js?
• Level of experience with Ember.js?
• Level of experience with Angular.js?
• Level of experience with Angular 2+?
• Level of experience with Swift?
• Level of experience with PHP?
• Level of experience with Python?
• Level of experience with Go?
• Level of experience with Android?
• Level of experience with iOS Native?
• Level of experience with Java?
• Level of experience with .net?
• Level of experience with Scala?
• Level of experience with vue.js?
• Level of experience with AI?
• Level of experience with Git?
• Level of experience with Vanilla Javascript?
• Level of experience with GraphQL?
• Level of experience with Ionic?
• Level of experience with Phone Gap?
• Level of experience with C#/C++?
• Level of experience with Machine Learning?
• Level of experience with Big Data?
• Level of experience with SalesForce Integrations?
• Level of experience with Okta Integrations?
• Level of experience with Quickbooks Integrations?
• Level of experience with WordPress?
• Level of experience with LISP?
• Level of experience with Perl?
• Level of experience with MatLab?
• Level of experience with SQL?
• Level of experience with MySQL?
• Level of experience with Firebase?
• Level of experience with Laravel?
• Level of experience with Django?
• Level of experience with the Internet of Things?
• Level of experience with Hardware Integrations?
• Level of experience with DevOps?
• Level of experience with AWS?
• Level of experience with Postgres? 
• Level of experience with Flask?
• How good is your English?
• Were you referred by a FullStack employee? If so, please write in their full name below.
• How did you hear about us?
  

The idea is having the answers to these questions automatically fed into your applicant tracking system where you could review the answers and qualify or disqualify applicants. We use Lever, but there are many others.

Interview Process

As you screen your new candidates, you'd want to start interviewing the ones who qualify for the position. Here is an overview of our step-by-step interview process:

1. Phone screen: A call that takes 10 to 15 minutes where the potential candidate is given general information about Fullstack Labs and is asked four to five general questions regarding their professional experience. We also assess the candidate’s communication skills as well as salary expectations. 
2. General Coding Assessment (GCA): A standardized test that helps us measure core programming and computer science knowledge. This standard test is provided by CodeSignal. We only move forward with candidates that achieve a score of 650+.
3. First Interview: A 60-minute interview to dig into their past extensively. We evaluate the candidate’s job history and dig into significant projects the candidate has participated in.
4. Take-home coding challenge: An assignment that the candidates record via video with specific technical tasks to complete. 
5. Coding challenge review: The coding challenge is reviewed by our CTO, Mike Piccolo, and our CIO, Ben Carle, to see if it was done correctly and is assigned a grade. 
6. Final Interview: If the candidate succeeded with the take-home challenge, they have a final interview with our CTO and CIO. We invest significant time from our CTO or CIO to recruit the right high-quality applicants.

How to make a job offer to a Python developer?

During this step, you have an opportunity to communicate information about your organization. We use this opportunity to continue sharing information with the prospect that the candidate will either identify with our culture and accept the job offer, or disagree with our culture and reject the job offer. We attach the following documents to each job offer:

Offer letter

This includes details on the roles and responsibilities of the position, location, manager, title, compensation, benefits, PTO, etc.

‍You can download the template in PDF format here.

An overview of our company culture and values 

This includes our mission statement, vision statement, and company values. The purpose is to help candidates further understand the company’s culture and determine if they are a good fit. Here is ours.

Our company's design and development playbook 

We outline our project management process and how we manage teams and individuals. Use this as an example.

FullStack Feedback

This outlines how our team should give and receive feedback, and further explains our management philosophy. Here is an example.

Python Developer Salary Guide

The pay for Python developers is going to depend on some variables. In this article we researched those variables so you're clear on what to expect.

We also have a large team of Python developers available, both onshore and nearshore, to build your solution. Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask any of us any questions.