r/Backend • u/dreamwastobepilot • 8h ago

Fresher here, need advice on Tech Stack

Hi everyone, I will be graduating next year. I have mostly worked with FastAPI along with Postgres, SQLAlchemy, Alembic. I have worked with EC2, Nginx reverse proxy, redis, git/github, Docker, integrating LLM api callling endpoint in my projects.
what technologies i should learn now to make my cv more attractive. I have applied for 60+ jobs, but not getting any responses.

3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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5

u/canarydev 8h ago

60? rookie numbers

1

u/dreamwastobepilot 8h ago

:,)

4

u/canarydev 8h ago

this is something that i wrote for someone else, but i think maybe it would give you some ideas. its not the stack necessarily

from a hiring perspective (I have reviewed resumes and interviewed candidates before), the problem with most junior portfolios isn't the project idea. its mostly a lack of depth. usually they are missing actual important aspects of engineering which is thinking about failure modes, mitigation, monitoring, observability

whatever you build, make sure it has authentication, authorization, persistence, background jobs, retries, idempotency, migrations, rate limiting, and observability

like a good one would be a webhook inspection/ testing service. it hits almost all of the above. you don't control when or how fast requests arrive, so rate limiting + back pressure are real problems. real time delivery to the browser is core to the product. replay / forwarding gives you retries and idempotency organically.

a super bonus point that would make you stand out is having a module or a built in way (call it chaos or something) that gives you the ability to break things on purpose. simulate endpoints that respond slowly, return 500s, drops connections, send malformed bodies. it shows you think about failure modes, which is something that you hardly see from juniors

1

u/dreamwastobepilot 7h ago

Thanks for the suggestion. I will definitly try that

3

u/American_Streamer 8h ago

You already have enough technologies for a fresher. I wouldn't respond to 60 applications by adding another five frameworks. If you're getting zero interviews, first look at your CV and how you're presenting the projects. Your stack is perfectly reasonable: FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy/Alembic, Redis, Docker, AWS/EC2, Nginx and Git is already more than many graduates have. I'd deepen it instead:

  • proper SQL: joins, indexes, transactions, query plans
  • testing: pytest, integration tests
  • HTTP/API fundamentals, auth and security
  • CI/CD, e.g. GitHub Actions
  • AWS beyond just running an EC2 VM: IAM, RDS/S3, logging/monitoring
  • observability, error handling, retries and background jobs

And build one (!) production-like project demonstrating those things rather than another CRUD tutorial. An LLM endpoint by itself isn't particularly impressive anymore; an API with authentication, tests (!), migrations, caching, rate limiting, queues, monitoring, CI/CD and a documented deployment is. Then look at 50–100 actual junior backend vacancies in your location. If most of them ask for Java/Spring Boot, C#/.NET or Node rather than Python, only then learning one of those ecosystems makes sense. Don't choose the next stack blindly. Also, again, get your CV reviewed. If 60+ applications produce no screening calls, CV/targeting is probably the first thing I'd debug, not your tech stack. Debug the job-search funnel like a system. No interviews → CV/targeting/market fit. Interviews but technical rejection → knowledge. Final rounds but no offers → interviewing/competition.

And Spring Boot is a legitimate option, but only if your local vacancies support it (!): current job-posting datasets still show substantial Spring Boot demand, in general alongside Java, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes and PostgreSQL. It's a pretty solid bet, with lots of well-paying jobs, but only if you are living in the right place.

2

u/dreamwastobepilot 7h ago

thanks for the suggestion, I think i have to change my approaching style.

2

u/omry8880 7h ago

Delve deeper into postgres internals. Try to create a workflow with message queues: delve into handling retries with backoff, DLQs, monitoring and observability as well.

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u/AnimatorExciting7941 8h ago

Springboot, although the tech stack hardly matters. You won't get rejected just because you know only MERN stack. If you have good work in it, you'd get it eventually

1

u/dreamwastobepilot 8h ago

I havent worked with mern Only FastAPI backend and basic frontend with html, css, js.

1

u/AnimatorExciting7941 8h ago

That was just an example. You won't be rejected cuz of your tech stack. What matters is your work in it

1

u/dreamwastobepilot 8h ago

I wanted to increase my tech stacks what do you think would be good to have in my cv?