import dateutil.parser

from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone

epoch = datetime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=timezone.utc)

sDate = "2018-02-27T14:03:15Z"

dt = dateutil.parser.parse(sDate)

ts = (dt - epoch) // timedelta(seconds=1)

 

source:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8777753/converting-datetime-date-to-utc-timestamp-in-python