7-Point Checklist to Hire a Strong Backend Developer

Dec 09, 2020

In the remote world, we have abundant human talent. Yet it’s tough to find the best engineers for your startup. I would like to share a 7-Point checklist to hire a Strong Backend Developer.

Our Objective

As a startup owner, you need the best engineers to work for your vision. I want to highlight some qualities that a strong back end engineer aka API REST services developer should possess.

Courtesy of freepic

1. Enforce REST standards

90% of developers still build APIs like /employee/create

REST standards are not clearly understood and used by most of the developers. Ask your back end engineer for a swagger document. The Swagger can give you a clear picture of the design skills. An ideal REST compliant API can be found here — Twilio

2. Build secure APIs

90% of the products still write back end security code

Security of the code must be 100% external. Look out for people with experience using Autho or JWT

3. Experience using industry standard design patterns

Clear separation of concerns must be handled using suitable design patterns. At least basic knowledge of MVC, MVVM etc depending on your tech needs. Proficient developers also exhibit knowledge of micro services, CQRS etc

4. Validation & Exception handling

Business rules and common sense validations are done externally using a rule engine wherever possible. Handling your edge cases and doing proper exception handling to take care of your business edge cases it’s a trivial responsibility to expect from your server-side guy

5. Common Sense Database knowledge

Use ORM where possible. Understanding basic table syntax, when to use an index, how to partition your tables, connection pooling, caching across DB layer, effective joins/views, etc is mandatory. See if your back end engineer can talk about this and share some thoughts

6. 12-factor principles

Micro services app or Monolithic app, I am a big fan of 12-factor principles. Effective use of 12-factor concepts helps build scalable, reliable and secure back end systems.

7. Clear understanding of Git & workflows

Why does merge conflict occur ? How to avoid this ?

Just ask this question and you will be surprised to see how many proficient developers fail to answer. Clear understanding of Git and respecting the code base is a secret trait of a good developer.