CLIEncoders · Services
Cloud and backend development services
The backend is the part of the product nobody sees and everybody feels. We build the boring, observable kind — the sort that stays up and can be reasoned about at two in the morning.
Boring on purpose
Most backend complexity is self-inflicted. A queue introduced for a load that never arrived, a microservice split before anyone knew where the seams were, an eventual-consistency model chosen because it sounded rigorous. Each one is a permanent tax on every future change.
We start with the simplest architecture that meets the actual requirement, instrument it properly, and add complexity only where measurement shows it is needed. That is less exciting to describe and considerably cheaper to own.
What we build
REST and GraphQL APIs in FastAPI, NestJS, Django or Node, with authentication and role-based access designed rather than bolted on. Data layers in PostgreSQL, with TimescaleDB where the workload is genuinely time-series and Redis where caching earns its complexity. Ingestion pipelines for device and third-party data, and the dashboards that make it useful.
Infrastructure as code, containerised deploys, CI/CD in GitHub Actions with tests that actually gate a release, and observability — structured logs, metrics and alerts — set up at the start rather than after the first outage teaches you why it matters.
Hosting is a decision, not a default
AWS and Azure are excellent and often correct. But for a great many products, a well-configured VPS or two behind Cloudflare costs a fraction of the managed equivalent and is entirely operable by a small team. Conversely, some workloads genuinely need managed scale.
We will give you the cost and operational comparison for your specific case, including the part most vendors skip: what it costs in your time, not just in invoices.
Questions
What people ask before starting
Do we need Kubernetes?
Almost certainly not, and we will say so plainly. Kubernetes solves problems that appear at a scale and team size most products never reach, and it brings an operational burden that a small team pays for daily. Containers on a managed platform or a couple of well-configured hosts cover an enormous range of real systems. If you genuinely do need it, that will be visible in your requirements rather than a matter of preference.
Can you work with our existing backend?
Yes, and most of our backend work is exactly that. We start by reading the code and the deploy path, then give you a written assessment separating what is fine, what is risky, and what is actively costing you. We would rather extend something that works than justify a rewrite.
How do you handle secrets and security?
Secrets live in a managed secret store or the platform's environment, never in the repository. Access is least-privilege by default, dependencies are scanned in CI, and any external surface gets rate limiting and input validation as a matter of course rather than after a report. We are engineers rather than a security audit firm, and for a system handling regulated data we will tell you where an independent penetration test is warranted.
What does ongoing maintenance look like?
Optional, and scoped rather than open-ended. Some clients take a monthly retainer covering dependency updates, monitoring and a response window. Others take the runbook and operate it themselves, which is a perfectly good outcome and one the documentation is written to support.
Related
Where this usually connects
Tell us what you are building
One technical call is usually enough to tell you whether this is straightforward, genuinely hard, or the wrong approach entirely. We would rather say so early than quote for the wrong thing.
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