A guide to help you hire FastAPI Developers

Developed to combine performance with developer happiness, FastAPI brings together speed, modern Python typing, and automatic documentation generation. It's trusted by startups and large enterprises alike.

But building on FastAPI isn't just about creating a few endpoints; it demands architectural planning, asynchronous programming skills, dependency management, and deployment expertise.

Hiring the right FastAPI developer means launching robust, high-performance APIs that scale with your product.

What is FastAPI?

FastAPI is a modern, open-source, asynchronous web framework for building APIs with Python 3.7+ based on standard Python-type hints. It’s built on top of Starlette for the web parts and Pydantic for data validation.

What makes FastAPI special is its ability to automatically generate OpenAPI and Swagger documentation, built-in support for async/await, and tight integration with Python typing—all without sacrificing performance.

FastAPI is ideal for:

• Building RESTful APIs quickly and cleanly
• Asynchronous services (real-time systems, chat apps)
• Machine learning model serving
• Microservices in cloud-native architectures
• API-first applications with auto-generated docs

When do you need a FastAPI Developer?

You need a FastAPI developer when:

• You want to build or modernize APIs using Python;
• You need blazing-fast performance without the complexity of low-level frameworks;
• Your product relies on async data handling, streaming, or WebSockets;
• You’re developing ML services and need to serve predictions as APIs;
• You want built-in documentation without extra tooling.

What makes a great FastAPI Developer?

1. Mastery of Python Type Hints & Pydantic, FastAPI relies heavily on type hints for request/response validation. Developers should:

• Use pydantic.BaseModel for request bodies and responses
• Validate nested data structures easily
• Catch bugs early through static typing

from pydantic import BaseModel

class User(BaseModel):
    id: int
    name: str
    email: str

2. Asynchronous Programming with async def, FastAPI is async-first. Developers must:

• Write async def endpoints
• Handle async DB calls, HTTP requests, or file I/O
• Use httpx, asyncpg, or motor effectively

@app.get("/users/{user_id}")
async def get_user(user_id: int):
    user = await fetch_user_from_db(user_id)
    return user

Dependency Injection, FastAPI’s Depends system is powerful and modular. Great developers:

• Abstract database sessions, auth checks, or service logic
• Reuse dependencies elegantly

from fastapi import Depends

def get_db():
    db = create_db_session()
    try:
        yield db
    finally:
        db.close()

4. API Documentation & testing, FastAPI generates Swagger docs out of the box. Developers should:

• Leverage response_model for clarity
• Use built-in docs for client-side integration
• Write tests using TestClient

from fastapi.testclient import TestClient

client = TestClient(app)

def test_read_root():
    response = client.get("/")
    assert response.status_code == 200

5. Security & Authentication, FastAPI supports OAuth2, JWT, and API keys. A solid developer:

• Implements secure password hashing and token auth
• Uses OAuth2PasswordBearer, Depends, and security schemes

6. Deployment & DevOps Familiarity

FastAPI is production-grade when deployed well. Ideal candidates:

• Use uvicorn with gunicorn
• Write Dockerfiles for containerization
• Deploy to AWS, GCP, or Azure using CI/CD

Nice-to-haves

• WebSocket handling (real-time apps)
• Background tasks (e.g., email, logging)
• GraphQL via Strawberry or Ariadne
• Caching strategies (Redis, FastAPI-limiter)
• Experience with ORMs (SQLAlchemy, Tortoise)

Common mistakes FastAPI Developers make

Ignoring async

Using blocking calls (like synchronous database drivers or requests) inside async def routes defeats the purpose of FastAPI’s asynchronous architecture. This leads to thread blocking, slow response times, and poor scalability under load.

Overusing globals

Relying on global variables or singletons for database sessions, configs, or user state instead of using FastAPI’s Depends() system makes the code harder to test, scale, and maintain. It also increases the risk of side effects in concurrent environments.

Poor validation

Skipping Pydantic models for request bodies or manually parsing JSON leads to brittle APIs that are prone to runtime errors, unclear documentation, and increased bug surface area.

Misconfiguring CORS or security headers

Leaving out proper CORS middleware or failing to configure allowed_origins, authentication headers, or HTTPS-only settings opens the API to security vulnerabilities and cross-origin issues—especially in frontend-facing services.

Sample interview questions (with real answers)

Q1. What’s the benefit of using Pydantic in FastAPI?

A: Pydantic enables automatic data validation and parsing using Python-type hints. It improves reliability and reduces manual checks.

Q2. How would you handle authentication in FastAPI?

A: Use OAuth2PasswordBearer, secure password hashing (passlib), and JWT tokens for stateless sessions.

Q3. How does FastAPI handle async operations?

A: FastAPI uses async def routes and is built on Starlette’s async ASGI architecture. You can integrate with async DB drivers, HTTP clients, or event loops.

Q4. How do you structure a large FastAPI app?

A: By modularizing routers, using APIRouter, separating models, services, and schemas, and registering routers in main.py.

Q5. How would you implement versioning in FastAPI?

A: Mount separate routers under different prefixes (/v1, /v2) using APIRouter.

Q6. How does FastAPI handle request validation errors?

A: FastAPI automatically returns a 422 Unprocessable Entity response with a detailed JSON error message if the request body or parameters fail Pydantic validation.

Q7. How can you document your API in FastAPI?

A: FastAPI auto-generates interactive Swagger UI and ReDoc documentation from Python type hints, Pydantic models, and route annotations.

Q8. How do you add middleware in FastAPI?

A: You can use the @app.middleware("http") decorator to define custom middleware functions, or add third-party middleware using add_middleware().

Q9. How do you handle background tasks in FastAPI?

A: Use the BackgroundTasks parameter in route functions to execute tasks after sending a response, ideal for sending emails or logging asynchronously.

Q10. How do you test FastAPI applications?

A: Use Python’s unittest or pytest along with TestClient from fastapi.testclient to simulate requests and test endpoints.

How to future-proof your FastAPI stack

• Use strict typing everywhere, it pays off long-term Leveraging Python's type hints makes your code more readable, debuggable, and IDE-friendly. FastAPI uses these types to auto-generate docs and perform data validation, reducing runtime errors and improving developer onboarding.

• Write comprehensive OpenAPI docs via response_model Always define response_model for endpoints to ensure clients receive well-documented and predictable data structures. This enhances API discoverability and enables frontend teams or third-party users to integrate confidently without additional clarification.

• Use dependency injection instead of globals FastAPI’s Depends() system allows for clean separation of concerns, better testability, and safer concurrent request handling. By avoiding a global state, you reduce bugs and improve scalability in multi-user, multi-threaded environments.

• Embrace async-native libraries and avoid blocking code Stick with async-compatible libraries like httpx, asyncpg, or motor to fully leverage FastAPI’s non-blocking nature. Blocking code in async routes will slow down your entire application under load, even with a lightweight ASGI server.

• Containerize with Docker and version APIs cleanly Use Docker to ensure consistency across environments, and structure your application with clear API versioning (/v1, /v2, etc.) to prevent breaking changes. This approach simplifies CI/CD pipelines and allows you to iterate without disrupting existing clients.

Common use cases by industry

Fintech

Use case: High-speed transactional APIs, fraud scoring endpoints Example: A digital bank using FastAPI to serve customer balance lookups and fraud alerts asynchronously.

Healthcare

Use case: Patient record APIs, scheduling systems Example: A telemedicine platform exposing appointment booking and health summaries through FastAPI.

eCommerce

Use case: Product listings, order tracking, inventory sync Example: A marketplace platform using FastAPI to expose product and inventory APIs to sellers and third-party tools.

AI/ML

Use case: Model inference and data preprocessing APIs Example: A startup exposing machine learning models via /predict endpoints in FastAPI, accepting JSON payloads and returning predictions.

SaaS & Internal tools

Use case: Dashboards, integrations, internal APIs Example: A CRM product using FastAPI to connect frontend dashboards with backend analytics and account systems.

Red flags in FastAPI resumes

• Uses blocking libraries inside async code
• No mention of Pydantic or dependency injection
• Relies only on Swagger, with no tests or monitoring setup
• Hardcoded configuration or poor separation of concerns
• No experience with deployment or containerization

Why hiring a Fast API Developer pays off

• Better developer velocity: FastAPI allows building clean, well-typed APIs quickly, reducing bugs and rewrites.
• Modern tech stack: Async-first, built-in docs, type safety, all modern backend essentials baked in.
• Production readiness: FastAPI scales well and plays nicely with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud providers.
• Secure by design: With OAuth2, CORS handling, and Pydantic validation, security is baked into the framework.
• Happy dev teams: Engineers enjoy working with FastAPI—it’s expressive, clean, and minimizes boilerplate.

Hiring challenges

• Python developers may not know async or type hints While many developers are fluent in Python, fewer have hands-on experience with async def or Python’s type system, which are core to writing performant and safe FastAPI code.

• Misuse of blocking I/O in async routes can tank performance Using libraries like requests or synchronous ORMs inside async endpoints introduces hidden bottlenecks, nullifying the benefits of FastAPI’s async-first design.

• Few developers structure apps cleanly with routers and DI Many small projects are written as monoliths in main.py, but scalable FastAPI apps require thoughtful modularization using APIRouter and proper dependency injection patterns.

• Documentation features are often underused or misused Developers may neglect to define response_model, tags, or parameter descriptions, resulting in poorly documented APIs despite FastAPI’s auto-generated Swagger support.

Summary: Hire the right talent

FastAPI has become the go-to framework for modern, high-performance Python APIs. Its speed, developer experience, and production readiness make it an excellent choice for backend services in startups and enterprise products alike.

But to unlock its full power, you need someone who understands more than just the syntax. You need a developer who knows how to build scalable architectures, write clean async code, manage dependencies, and deploy production-ready APIs.

By hiring a strong FastAPI developer, you set your team up for faster development, cleaner code, and a more maintainable product now or in the future.