Hire a Django REST Framework Developer

Need to hire a Django REST Framework developer to build an API other teams can actually depend on? That’s most of what I do. I’m Kuldeep Pisda — a senior backend engineer and former startup CTO in Bengaluru who has shipped DRF APIs powering web apps, mobile clients, and third-party integrations for 6+ years, remote, with teams across the world.

What I build with DRF#

• Clean serializers — nested writes, validation that lives in one place, and sparse-fieldset patterns so a mobile client and a dashboard can hit the same endpoint without over-fetching.
• Viewsets and routers that stay readable — the right mix of generic views, mixins, and plain APIView where the generics stop helping, not a wall of copy-pasted CRUD.
• Auth and permissions — token/JWT/session auth, Keycloak and SSO integrations, and object-level permissions that don’t leak one tenant’s data into another’s response.
• Versioning without breakage — evolving an API while the clients already in production keep working.
• Throttling, pagination, and filtering — cursor pagination for large sets, sane rate limits, and filter backends that map to real indexes.
• Self-documenting APIs — OpenAPI/Swagger schemas generated from the code so the docs never drift from reality.

I’ve taught this at DjangoCon#

At DjangoCon US 2022 I led a three-and-a-half-hour tutorial on serving REST APIs with DRF — permission control, role-based responses, customizing the Django admin, and testing with pytest, factories, and Faker — so the patterns I’d use on your API are ones I’ve had to explain to a room of Django developers. In production, the same discipline shows up as dynamic API fields and query optimization: sparse fieldsets so a mobile client and a dashboard hit one endpoint without over-fetching, and the N+1 storms hiding inside SerializerMethodFields hunted down with query logging and real Postgres indexes — one course-list endpoint went from 900+ queries per request to a handful. A DRF endpoint is only as fast as the queries behind it, and I fix the query rather than bolting a cache onto a bad one.

How engagements work#

Well-scoped work with a written plan and testable milestones: a greenfield API, a refactor of one that’s grown unwieldy, or a few hours reviewing serializer and permission design. Remote-first, async-friendly, IST, comfortable overlapping US and EU hours.

FAQ#

Can you work on an existing DRF codebase? Yes — a lot of my work is untangling APIs that grew fast: fat serializers, permission logic scattered across views, and endpoints that got slow.

Do you build the frontend too? I focus on the API and the PostgreSQL behind it, and design endpoints around what the client actually needs. I work well alongside frontend teams.

Can you version our API without breaking clients? Yes — that’s a common reason people call. I’ll design a migration path that keeps existing clients working while the new shape rolls out.

Do you write tests? Yes — pytest and factory_boy, TDD where it earns its keep. I’m a DjangoCon and EuroPython speaker on testing Django.

DRF, async views, or Django Ninja? I’ll advise on when async or Django Ninja is worth it versus staying on classic DRF — it depends on your workload, and I’ll be honest about the trade-off.

What does it cost? Most builds start with a $4,000 audit — written findings with ranked fixes in 7 calendar days plus a 60-minute walkthrough call — and I then quote the build itself in writing, with the audit fee credited if we start within 60 days. If you first want a sanity check on one decision, a second opinion is $500: a 90-minute call and a written recommendation within 48 hours. All prices in USD plus GST where applicable, and you’ll always have the cost in writing before we start.

Let’s talk#

Tell me about the API you’re building — get in touch, or grab a time below:

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