The capacity of the Python Software Foundation to support the development of CPython, the reference implementation of Python, hasn't kept pace with the growth in popularity of the programming language. CPython is developed and maintained largely by volunteers, and has accrued a large backlog of open issues (>6,500 open issues at https://github.com/python/cpython) and unmerged code contributions (>1,400 open pull requests https://github.com/python/cpython/pulls). Additionally, there are many R&D requests from users that we need to address.

The goal is to hire to address backlog, and afterwards, hire to address new projects.