Django for Startup Founders: A better software architecture for SaaS startups and consumer apps: https://web.archive.org/web/20210624040717/https://alexkrupp...

This article is very useful.

I use DRF but not serializers and write validations by hand because it is too abstract for me.

My views just call services and return the result.

Have you seen django-bolt? Might interest you, your setup sounds like it would benefit from it.

https://github.com/dj-bolt/django-bolt