Most technical hiring processes test the wrong things. These checklists are built from years of hiring senior engineers across six offices and 14 countries, so you stop guessing and start hiring people who actually ship.
Stop hiring on gut feel. Start hiring on evidence.
A step-by-step checklist for evaluating senior engineering candidates across technical depth, product thinking, communication, and culture fit, without a single whiteboard algorithm.
The five questions that reveal how an engineer thinks under pressure
How to evaluate architecture judgment without trick questions
The communication signals that separate senior engineers from experienced juniors
Red flags most hiring managers miss until month three
Everything you need to evaluate frontend depth, backend thinking, system design judgment, and the product instincts that separate good engineers from great ones.
How to probe API design thinking, database decisions, scalability instincts, and the security awareness that only comes from having broken things in production.
Beyond framework knowledge. This checklist covers performance thinking, accessibility awareness, UX instincts, and the attention to detail that separates engineers who care from those who just ship tickets.
Evaluating AI engineers requires a different lens. This checklist covers prompt engineering depth, model selection judgment, production readiness thinking, and the ability to build AI features that work beyond the demo.
iOS and Android specific. Covers platform conventions, performance awareness, offline-first thinking, and the app store experience that only engineers who've shipped to production truly understand.
Technical leadership is different from technical excellence. This checklist evaluates how candidates handle ambiguity, prioritise under pressure, grow junior engineers, and make architecture decisions that outlast them.
For founders hiring their first technical leader. Covers technical vision, team building philosophy, communication with non-technical stakeholders, and the early decisions that set the engineering culture for years.
Before you sign anything. Twenty-two questions to ask any agency before you hand over your product, your budget, or your timeline. Built from the mistakes founders made before they found us.
How to evaluate distributed engineering partners beyond the sales deck. Covers delivery track record, communication standards, engineering culture, and the contract terms that protect you when things get hard.
A self-assessment checklist for engineers evaluating their own readiness. Covers technical depth, product thinking, communication, and the leadership instincts that senior roles demand, even when the title doesn't say "lead."
Not a study guide for trick questions. A practical checklist for engineers preparing for senior-level interviews, covering how to articulate architecture decisions, communicate trade-offs, and demonstrate product thinking without rehearsed answers.
Most interview frameworks test what engineers know. Ours test how engineers think.
There is a difference between an engineer who can recite a sorting algorithm and one who can look at your architecture, identify the flaw in the authentication flow, and explain the trade-off between two equally valid solutions. The first one interviews well. The second one ships great software.
Every checklist on this page was built to find the second kind.
We don't use any of these checklists as rigid scorecards. We use them as conversation frameworks, tools that keep the evaluation honest, structured, and focused on what actually matters.
Every Devlyn engineer goes through our "build something real" challenge, a practical problem based on the actual work we do. No LeetCode. No whiteboard. Just a chance to show us how they think when it counts.
If you're scaling an engineering team and want to build a hiring process that consistently finds great engineers, that's a conversation we're happy to have.