Backend & API Engineering

APIs That Power
Everything Downstream

We design and build backend systems and APIs that are fast, secure, and maintainable — from a single REST endpoint to a full microservices architecture serving millions of requests per day.

Discuss your project

The Backend Engineering Stack

PHP / Laravel
Primary Application Framework
Laravel's ecosystem (Eloquent, queues, events, Horizon) accelerates development of complex domain logic while remaining performant with FPM and OPcache.
Go
High-Throughput Microservices
For services where raw throughput or binary size matters — API gateways, proxies, data ingestion pipelines. Go's goroutine model handles 10K+ concurrent connections elegantly.
GraphQL
Flexible API Layer
Schema-first development with automatic documentation. DataLoader batching eliminates N+1 problems. Particularly effective for client-driven data fetching (mobile apps, SPAs).
REST / OpenAPI
Public & Partner APIs
OpenAPI-first design ensures documentation is always accurate. We generate client SDKs from the spec and use contract testing to prevent breaking changes.
gRPC
Internal Service Communication
Protobuf encoding and HTTP/2 multiplexing make gRPC 5–7× faster than REST for internal service-to-service calls, with strong typing enforced at the schema level.
PostgreSQL
Primary Relational Store
Rich query capabilities, JSONB for semi-structured data, row-level security for multi-tenancy, and robust partitioning. PgBouncer for connection pooling at scale.
Redis
Cache, Sessions, Queues
Multi-purpose: response cache, session store, queue backend (Laravel Horizon), rate limiting counters, and pub/sub for real-time events. A single Redis cluster serves multiple roles.
Docker / K8s
Deployment Platform
Each microservice in its own container. K8s Deployments, Services, and Ingress handle routing and scaling. GitOps via ArgoCD ensures repeatable, auditable deployments.

Designing Backend Systems

API-first design

We define the API contract (OpenAPI or GraphQL schema) before writing implementation code. This gives frontend teams, mobile teams, and integration partners a stable interface to develop against in parallel — cutting delivery time significantly on multi-team projects.

Contract testing (via Pact or OpenAPI validators) ensures that API changes don't silently break consumers. Breaking changes go through a versioning and deprecation cycle, not a hot-swap.

Bounded contexts and service ownership

We derive microservice boundaries from domain analysis, not technical layers. Each service owns its data, exposes a well-defined interface, and is deployable independently. We resist the urge to split services prematurely — a well-structured monolith is better than a distributed monolith.

Inter-service communication follows the same principles: synchronous (gRPC/REST) for queries requiring immediate responses; asynchronous (Kafka/RabbitMQ) for events that can tolerate eventual consistency.

Security by design

Authentication and authorisation are handled at the API gateway — JWT verification, rate limiting, and IP allow-listing before a request reaches any service. Each service enforces its own authorisation policies (RBAC or ABAC) using trusted claims from the gateway, never raw tokens.

Database schema versioning

Migrations are versioned, reversible, and run in CI before deployment. Schema changes that risk locking (adding a NOT NULL column to a large table) are broken into safe multi-step operations. We use online schema change tools (pt-online-schema-change, pg_repack) where table locks are unacceptable.

How We Build APIs

01

Domain modelling workshop

We run event-storming sessions with your domain experts to identify entities, commands, and events. This produces the bounded context map before any database is designed.

02

API contract first

OpenAPI spec or GraphQL schema is written and reviewed before any implementation. Clients can start integration against a mock server immediately.

03

Test-driven development

Unit tests written alongside implementation. Integration tests verify database interactions and external service contracts. No feature ships without a corresponding test.

04

Performance profiling on staging

We run query profiling (EXPLAIN ANALYZE) and API response time benchmarks on realistic data volumes before any production deployment.

05

Blue/green deployment

New API versions run alongside the old. Traffic shifts gradually with automated rollback if error rate exceeds threshold. Zero downtime, zero risk.

API Contract Testing

We use Pact for consumer-driven contract tests and OpenAPI validators in CI. Any response that diverges from the published schema fails the build — before it reaches review or deployment.

Integration Test Suite

Test containers spin up a real database, Redis, and message broker for each CI run. Integration tests verify actual database behaviour, not mocked repositories — catching constraint violations, deadlocks, and query performance issues that unit tests miss.

Security Testing

OWASP top 10 review on every new endpoint. Automated SAST in CI (static analysis). Dependency vulnerability scanning on every build. Annual penetration test by a separate team.

Load Testing

k6 scripts simulate realistic API traffic patterns (mix of read-heavy and write-heavy paths). We verify response time at p50/p95/p99 and watch for connection pool exhaustion and memory growth under sustained load.

APIs We've Built

SaaS Platform · Northern Europe
A B2B SaaS company needed to expose their platform to enterprise clients via a secure, versioned public API with SDKs for three languages, webhook support, and a developer portal.
We designed an OpenAPI 3.1 spec first, built the REST API in Laravel with OAuth2 (via Laravel Passport), generated typed SDKs for Python, JavaScript, and PHP, implemented webhook delivery with retry queues in Horizon, and built a developer portal with interactive docs powered by Redoc.
3Language SDKs
99.95%API uptime
<60msMedian response
Logistics Platform · DACH Region
A logistics software company had a 10-year-old monolith that was becoming unmaintainable. They needed to extract critical domains into microservices without breaking 200+ integrations.
We used the strangler fig pattern — new functionality built as services, old endpoints proxied through an API gateway to the monolith, gradually redirected as services matured. The monolith shrunk over 18 months without any integration downtime.
200+Integrations preserved
0Integration outages
Deploy frequency
Healthcare Technology · EU
A healthcare tech company needed a FHIR-compatible API for patient data with end-to-end encryption, audit logging for every data access, and GDPR-compliant data deletion workflows.
We built a FHIR R4 compliant REST API in Go with field-level encryption using AES-256, immutable audit logs written to an append-only PostgreSQL partition, and a data subject rights workflow that handles erasure requests across all services via an event-driven cascade.
FHIR R4Compliant
100%Audit coverage
GDPRArt. 17 compliant
Marketplace · Global
A two-sided marketplace needed a GraphQL API serving 4 different clients (web, iOS, Android, seller dashboard), each with very different data requirements, without creating over-fetching or under-fetching problems.
We built a GraphQL API using PHP (Lighthouse) with persisted queries for production clients, DataLoader batching for N+1 elimination, and field-level authorization. Response caching at the field level reduces database load by 75% for the most common query shapes.
4Client platforms
75%DB load reduction
<50msp95 response

Need a robust backend?

Whether it's a greenfield API, a migration, or an integration challenge — let's talk through the problem and the right approach.