Josh Smith is a specialized Python recruitment expert with 6+ years of experience exclusively focused on placing Python developers. He has successfully matched 100+ engineers—from junior developers to CTOs—with roles at tech unicorns, financial institutions, and fast-growing startups across the UK, US, and Europe.
After years of sitting between developers and hiring managers, I noticed a persistent information gap. Developers didn't know their market value. Managers didn't know what competitive compensation looked like. Everyone was guessing.
Snake Signals exists to democratize the market intelligence that typically stays locked inside recruitment agencies. The salary benchmarks, hiring trends, and career strategies I share come directly from real placement data—not aggregated job postings or self-reported surveys.
When I say a senior Django developer in London commands £85k-£105k, it's because I've placed them there. When I advise hiring managers to move fast (companies that decide within 7 days see 24% higher offer acceptance), it's because I've tracked hundreds of hiring processes and seen what works.
I specialize in Python roles because depth beats breadth in recruitment. Understanding the difference between a senior FastAPI developer and a Django specialist matters when matching talent to roles. Knowing that a candidate's Polars experience signals modern data engineering skills helps me identify hidden gems that keyword-matching misses.
I work with both sides of the market:
I work through Understanding Recruitment, a UK-based technical recruitment firm specializing in software engineering. My focus has always been Python and adjacent technologies—Django, FastAPI, Flask, data engineering, ML/AI, and cloud infrastructure.
Before specializing in Python, I learned the hard way that generalist recruitment doesn't work for technical roles. The moment I went deep on one language ecosystem, everything improved: better matches, faster processes, happier candidates and clients.
I'm always happy to chat about Python careers, hiring strategies, or salary benchmarking. You can reach me directly: