An API is a contract with everything that will ever depend on it: your web app, your mobile app, your partners, and integrations that do not exist yet. Design it carelessly and you either break consumers or carry the mistake indefinitely. Design it well and it quietly supports everything built on top for years.

Who this is for

Companies whose data needs reaching a mobile app, a partner or a second front end. Teams whose current API breaks its consumers on every release. Products where the backend has become the performance bottleneck.

Problems we solve

Breaking changes. No versioning, so every improvement is a coordinated release across every consumer.
Undocumented endpoints. Integration by trial and error against a live system.
N+1 queries. An endpoint issuing hundreds of queries per request, discovered at scale.
Inconsistent responses. Different shapes, error formats and pagination per endpoint.
Weak authorisation. Authentication present but object-level access unchecked.
No limits. No rate limiting, so one client can degrade the service for everyone.

What we build

REST and GraphQL APIs with consistent conventions across every endpoint
Versioning strategy that lets the API evolve without breaking consumers
OpenAPI specifications kept accurate, with contract tests enforcing them
Token authentication, scoped permissions and object-level authorisation checks
Rate limiting, pagination, filtering and sorting as standard behaviour
Background queues for work that should not block a request
Caching at query and response level, with correct invalidation
Structured logging, request tracing and performance monitoring

How we work

We design the contract before implementing it, and treat the OpenAPI specification as binding rather than as documentation written afterwards. Authorisation is tested per endpoint per role, because object-level access control is the most commonly missed vulnerability in APIs that otherwise look secure. Query performance is measured under realistic data volumes rather than against a seed database of fifty rows.

Technologies we use

Laravel and Node.js, PostgreSQL and MySQL with deliberate indexing, Redis for caching, queues and rate limiting. OpenAPI for specification, Pest and comparable frameworks for test coverage, Docker and GitHub Actions for deployment.

Business benefits

New clients — mobile, partner, internal — build against a stable contract
Backend changes stop breaking front ends
Integration takes days rather than weeks because the documentation is accurate
Performance problems surface in monitoring rather than in complaints

Where it pays off

Backing a mobile app with a proper API
Opening data to partners or customers
Splitting a monolith into services with clear boundaries
Replacing an API that breaks its consumers regularly
Fixing endpoints that have become too slow at current data volumes

Common questions

REST or GraphQL?

REST for most cases — simpler to cache, monitor and reason about. GraphQL where clients have genuinely varied data needs and over-fetching is a measurable problem. The answer depends on your consumers, not on fashion.

How do you handle versioning?

Additive changes in place, breaking changes behind a new version, with a deprecation window and monitoring of which consumers are still on the old version so it can actually be retired.

Can you improve an existing API without breaking clients?

Usually. We add contract tests and monitoring first to establish what consumers actually rely on, then improve behind that safety net.

Need an API that outlasts its first consumer? The contract is the part worth designing carefully.

Backend & API Development