Backend Developer Skills Checklist
Core Fundamentals
• Expertise in at least one programming language (JavaScript/TypeScript - [Link], Python -
Django/FastAPI, Java - Spring Boot, Go, PHP, Ruby, etc.)
• API design: REST, GraphQL, WebSockets
• Authentication & Authorization (JWT, OAuth2, Sessions, RBAC)
Databases
• Relational DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL)
• NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis)
• ORM/ODM usage (Mongoose, Sequelize, Prisma, TypeORM)
• Query optimization & indexing
System Design & Architecture
• MVC, Clean Architecture
• Monolithic vs Microservices
• Caching (Redis, Memcached)
• Message Queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Scalability & load balancing
DevOps Basics
• Git & GitHub/GitLab
• CI/CD pipelines
• Docker & containerization
• Cloud basics (AWS, GCP, Azure, Render, Railway)
Security
• Hashing & Encryption (bcrypt, AES, RSA)
• SQL Injection, XSS, CSRF prevention
• HTTPS, CORS
Performance & Optimization
• Database query optimization
• API response time improvement
• Caching strategies
• Rate limiting & throttling
Testing
• Unit tests (Jest, Mocha, PyTest, JUnit)
• Integration tests
• Postman / Swagger for API testing & docs
Soft Skills
• Debugging skills
• Writing clean, maintainable code
• Communication with frontend team
• Documentation (Swagger, Postman Collections, README)