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Frameworks Interview Questions — What Senior Engineers Need to Know

By Nikola Pashov

Framework questions in senior interviews are really about understanding the patterns underneath the framework, not the API surface. When an interviewer asks about Spring or dependency injection, they want to know if you understand inversion of control as a principle, not just how to annotate a class.

These 7 questions cover the framework concepts that demonstrate genuine engineering depth: how dependency injection containers work, ORM design trade-offs, middleware pipelines, and the architectural patterns that frameworks implement. Understanding these makes you effective with any framework, not just the one you’ve used most.

All 7 Questions

FastAPI — Async vs SyncMid
How does FastAPI handle async vs sync endpoints?

FastAPI is built on Starlette and uses Python's `asyncio` event loop via Uvicorn (or Hypercorn) as the ASGI server.

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Django — SignalsMid
What are Django signals and when should you use them?

Django's signal framework is a publish-subscribe mechanism that allows decoupled components to react to events elsewhere in the codebase.

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Django — select_related vs prefetch_relatedMid
What is the difference between select_related and prefetch_related in Django?

Both methods solve the N+1 query problem in Django, but they work differently and apply to different relationship types.

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SQLAlchemy — SessionSenior
How does the SQLAlchemy session work?

The SQLAlchemy Session is the core of the ORM's unit-of-work pattern.

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Django — MiddlewareMid
How does Django middleware work?

Django middleware is a framework of hooks that sits between the WSGI/ASGI server and your view layer.

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FastAPI — PydanticMid
How does FastAPI use Pydantic for validation?

FastAPI integrates Pydantic deeply: any function parameter annotated with a Pydantic `BaseModel` subclass is treated as the request body.

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SQLAlchemy — Connection PoolSenior
How does SQLAlchemy's connection pool work?

SQLAlchemy manages database connections through a connection pool that reuses existing connections rather than opening a new one per query—connection establishment (TCP handshake, TLS, authentication) is expensive and adds 10-100ms per request.

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How to Prepare

Focus on understanding concepts deeply enough to explain them in your own words. For each topic, practice articulating the trade-offs and real-world applications — interviewers care about practical judgment, not textbook definitions.

Related Topics

  • Java Interview Questions
  • Design Principles Interview Questions
  • Python Interview Questions

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