Web Development

Backend development services

Nobody admires a good back end. They just notice that orders go through, reports add up and the system still works on your busiest day. That’s the job.

Discuss Your Project

Back-end problems tend to stay hidden until they’re expensive. An unindexed table runs fine with ten thousand rows and falls over at ten million. An integration works until the other company’s API has a bad afternoon, then duplicate orders appear. A long-running task holds up the web server until the whole site slows to a crawl.

Good back-end work plans for those days. That means idempotent operations, so a retry doesn’t charge somebody twice. It means queues for slow work, timeouts and circuit breakers around third parties, and an audit trail for changes that somebody will one day need to explain. None of it shows up in a demo, but all of it shows up in production.

Designing for the scale you’re likely to have

We don’t build for millions of users you don’t yet have. Microservices and event streaming add real running costs, and most businesses are better served by a well-structured single application with a good database. We’ll design so you can pull out a service later if you need to, rather than paying for that complexity on day one.

Where back ends start to hurt

Slow as data grows

Queries that were instant at launch now take seconds, and reports time out or lock tables for everyone else.

Flaky third-party connections

Failed webhooks and API timeouts cause missing or duplicated data, which is then fixed by hand.

Logic nobody can explain

Important rules are buried in stored procedures, cron jobs or undocumented scripts.

Backend services

Application architecture

Clear domain boundaries, and a structure that makes the next change easier rather than harder.

Data modelling

Schemas, indexes, constraints and migrations that protect data integrity.

Queues and scheduled work

Background processing for imports, emails, reports and integrations, with retries and alerts.

Scaling work

Query optimisation, caching, read replicas and load testing where the numbers justify it.

Observability

Logging, error tracking and metrics, so that problems are found before customers report them.

Where it fits

  • Platforms processing payments, bookings or orders
  • Systems exchanging data with several third parties
  • Applications that have outgrown their first design

Technology

  • PHP
  • Laravel
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • RabbitMQ
  • Docker
  • AWS

Backend questions

Do we need microservices?
Most businesses don’t, at least not yet. A well-structured single application is cheaper to run and easier to change. Splitting out services makes sense when teams or specific workloads need to be independent.
Can you fix performance without a rebuild?
Often. Most slowdowns come from a small number of queries or missing indexes. Profiling usually shows quick wins before any bigger changes are needed.
Which languages do you use?
Mostly PHP with Laravel, Node.js and Python, according to the project. We’d generally stick with what your team can support.

Related services

Interested in Backend Development?

Outline what you need, and we will reply by email with questions or next steps.

Start a Project