Why pre-screen senior full stack developers before the technical panel
Pre-screening senior full stack developers saves your panel from candidates who are strong at one end of the stack only. Applicants arrive from job boards, referrals, and agency benches with resumes that list React, Node, Postgres, and AWS in a single line, with no way to tell where they actually shipped. A ten minute screen shows whether they can talk about indexes and query plans as fluently as re-renders and state, and whether they have ever owned a production incident.
What actually matters when screening Senior Full Stack Developer candidates
- 01
Technical proficiency
Probe both ends properly: data modelling and API design as well as front-end state, rendering, and browser behaviour.
- 02
Systems and trade-offs
Test how they reason about a system under load, and what they would change before it breaks.
- 03
Evidence and rigour
Check their testing and review habits, and whether they can describe a bug that reached production and why.
- 04
Collaboration and communication
Assess how they operate at senior level: reviewing others, splitting work, and pushing back on a bad requirement.
Pre-screening questions to ask Senior Full Stack Developer candidates
12 questions grouped by what they test. Ask the same set in every screen and score answers on a consistent scale, or send them as an async video screen and compare answers side by side.
Full stack depth
5 questions01Walk us through your experience across front-end and back-end work: where do you go deepest, and where do you lean on others?
Listen forA candid split showing genuine depth on one side and working competence on the other, with named projects and the parts they personally owned.
Claims equal expert-level depth everywhere but cannot name a single decision they made on either side.
02Can you discuss your experience with database design and management? Walk us through a schema you designed and why you structured it that way.
Listen forConcrete talk of normalisation choices, indexes, foreign keys, migrations, and query performance on a real table they can describe.
Only mentions the ORM they used and cannot explain how their data was actually modelled or queried.
03Can you discuss your experience with API design and development, including how you handled versioning and breaking changes?
Listen forClear reasoning about resource design, status codes, pagination, auth, and a real strategy for shipping a breaking change without stranding clients.
Treats API design as writing endpoints on request, with no view on contracts, versioning, or consumers.
04What is your experience with JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue, and how do you handle state in a large front end?
Listen forSpecific state patterns (server state versus client state, caching, re-render costs) tied to a codebase they worked in for months.
Lists frameworks as keywords without any account of how state or rendering was structured.
05What steps do you take to ensure the security of the applications you build?
Listen forNamed practices: input validation, parameterised queries, authn versus authz, secret handling, dependency scanning, and where they found a real hole.
Answers only "we used HTTPS" or defers security entirely to a separate team.
Systems and incidents
3 questions06Have you ever had to handle a significant software failure in production? Talk us through what happened and what you changed afterwards.
Listen forA specific incident with symptoms, how they diagnosed it, the fix, and a durable change to monitoring, tests, or architecture afterwards.
Blames another team or infrastructure and describes no follow-up change to prevent recurrence.
07Can you describe your hands-on experience with cloud services like AWS or Azure, and what you were responsible for operating?
Listen forNamed services they configured (RDS, S3, ECS, Lambda, load balancers) plus awareness of cost, scaling limits, and failure modes.
Has only consumed a cloud environment set up by someone else and cannot describe any service configuration.
08How experienced are you with containerisation using Docker or Kubernetes, and what did you actually deploy with it?
Listen forReal work with Dockerfiles, image size or build time issues, and deployment or rollback mechanics in a specific environment.
Confuses running containers locally with owning a deployment pipeline, with no rollback story.
Rigour and collaboration
3 questions09What are your strategies for keeping code quality and maintainability high on a team, including how you review other people's work?
Listen forConcrete habits: review depth, linting and CI gates, refactoring in small steps, and an example of feedback that changed a teammate's design.
Cites a coverage number or "clean code" as the whole answer, with no review behaviour described.
10What is your approach to test-driven development, and where do you decide testing is not worth the cost?
Listen forA pragmatic position naming unit, integration, and contract tests, with an honest example of where they skipped tests deliberately.
Claims strict TDD everywhere but cannot describe a single test they wrote or a case they chose to skip.
11Record a short walkthrough of the most challenging project you have worked on: the constraint, the trade-off you chose, and what you would do differently.
Listen forA structured narrative with the real constraint, options considered, the decision they owned, and a specific regret or revision.
Describes a project generically with no personal decision, no trade-off, and no hindsight.
Working setup
1 question12Have you led or mentored other developers? Tell us about a time you pushed back on a requirement you thought was wrong.
Listen forEvidence of splitting work, unblocking juniors, and a real disagreement they raised with data or a smaller alternative proposal.
Only reports building whatever was assigned and avoids describing any disagreement with product or leadership.
How to score responses
Score every candidate on the same four criteria immediately after the screen. At this stage you are shortlisting for panel interviews, not making the final call.
Technical proficiency
35%5Genuinely strong on both ends, from schema and API design through to rendering and browser behaviour.
Systems and trade-offs
25%5Reasons about load, caching, and failure ahead of time, and names the trade-off they chose and what it cost.
Evidence and rigour
25%5Tests deliberately at the right level and can describe a production bug they caused, caught, and prevented recurring.
Collaboration and communication
15%5Reviews and mentors effectively, and pushes back constructively on requirements that will not survive contact.
Async video lets you hear a senior full stack developer explain a schema decision or a production incident unscripted, which is exactly how they will explain it to your panel and to a product manager pushing back.
Try it on HirevireScreening FAQ
Process basics
How many questions should a senior full stack developer screen include?
Eight to ten is enough for a screen. Keep two on back-end depth (data modelling, API contracts), two on front-end behaviour (state, rendering, responsive layout), two on systems and incidents, and two on collaboration and logistics. Anything longer duplicates the technical panel and pushes strong candidates out of your funnel before you have seen them code.
Should the screen include a live coding exercise?
No. Live coding belongs in the panel, where an engineer can react in real time. At the screen stage, ask them to walk through a real artefact instead: a schema they designed, an API they versioned, or a pull request they reviewed. That surfaces judgement and communication without booking two engineers for an hour.
Evaluating answers
How do you tell a genuine senior from a mid-level developer in a screen?
Seniors describe trade-offs and consequences, not tools. They will say why they chose a normalised schema over denormalised reads, what they gave up, and what broke later. Mid-level answers stay at the level of "we used React and Node" and describe tickets they completed rather than decisions they made or requirements they pushed back on.
What answers on testing and code quality should concern you?
Be cautious when candidates cite a coverage percentage as their whole quality story, or claim they always write tests first with no example. Strong answers name what they test and what they deliberately do not, mention integration or contract tests, and describe review feedback they gave that changed a design.
Go deeper on this role
Sanat has been hiring since 2012 and watching the recruitment industry change up close ever since, and turned that screening process into Hirevire's video screening platform. LinkedIn
