Try and model the interview around what they will actually do on the job. Write algorithms Build an API (Flask, SQLAlchemy, FastAPI, SQL) / tests Integrate AI into an existing API Deploy web apps / Containerisation All of it (Take home test?) Then design your questions around that to be more representative. If someone is not going to be writing high-performance algorithms it's less fruitful to ask them to answer such questions in the interview. That said, basic knowledge of Python data structures and when to use Lists, Maps, Sets, Dicts, etc, should be tested along with good practices like Type Hinting, Logging, OOP, Unit Testing, SOLID principles etc. More on reddit.com

Seems like you should test it on someone you think is competent to see if it’s clear for what you’re trying to test. It feels like I’m trying to help you cheat. More on reddit.com

For a 2 years experienced position, you should probably be familiar with the internals. I'd especially be interested in things like Iterator vs Iterable Mutable data-structures vs Immutable the internal implementation of python datastructs like list, dict, set. You'd be expected to use this so you should be familiar with how efficient are these w/ r/t to different things like search, insertion etc. whether you are aware of useful Python tools like generators, Context managers which improve the efficiency and readability whether you are thorough with aspects of testing (unittest, TDD, mocking etc). There's no good Python code without good tests. be prepared to whiteboard simple exercises. Start with the most straightforward implementation and feel free to use Pythonic idioms (like list comprehension) as you optimize the code. you'd be expected to know the tools Python provides and know how to use them. More on reddit.com

Sometimes I wonder why people still ask these things in interviews. In most real-world programming you can throw out half of those data structures and you'll never have to implement your own sort anyway. More on reddit.com