Backend and API development
Dedicated APIs, databases and scheduled jobs. Designed to be handed over: documented, tested and deployed from a pipeline.
fromR 9 500$1,200
Usually from 6 weeks.
- Fixed price, agreed before I start
- Pay in stages, starting with a deposit
- The code, domain and hosting in your name
Tell me what you need
A sentence or two is plenty. It comes straight to me, and I reply within one working day.
Cameron
You’re looking at the proof
This site is built the same way yours would be, and I publish its numbers rather than ask you to take my word for it. Measured on 18 October 2026 with Google’s own tool.
- Google speed score on a phone
- 98/100
- to load on slow mobile data (simulated)
- 2.1 s
- accessibility score
- 100/100
- search engine setup
- 100/100
Before anything goes live, automatic checks test every page on a phone, a tablet and a laptop, check every colour is readable, and run 39 tests on the contact form, including what happens if email is down. Yours gets the same. See every measurement, and what isn’t perfect.
And two complete sites you can try
A plumber in Cape Town
The pages a trade business needs, with prices up front and a quote form that works properly on a phone.
An online coffee shop
A working shop: six coffees in three sizes and six grinds, a cart, and checkout through PayFast.
The businesses are made up; the forms and checkout work. What each one shows, and how they measure up.
Not ready to start a project?
Send me your current website and I’ll check it for free. Within one working day you get a short email from me: how fast it is on a phone, how it looks to Google, and the first three things I’d fix.
No obligation and no mailing list. If it turns out your site is fine, I’ll say so.
The usual problem
Backends are where shortcuts compound. A schema nobody designed, jobs that fail without telling anyone, deployments that happen from someone’s laptop. It works until the day it does not, and by then the person who understood it has left.
Who it suits
- Products that need an API their mobile or web client can rely on
- Businesses whose database has grown without a design behind it
- Teams who need scheduled work to run reliably and provably
If you need a backend to support a product that does not exist yet, start with the product. Backends built ahead of a real client are usually wrong.
What you get
All of this is in the price.
- Database schema designed for how the data is actually used
- A documented API, versioned and typed end to end
- Scheduled and background jobs with retries and alerting
- Automated tests over business-critical paths
- Automatic, repeatable deployments, so releases never depend on one person’s laptop
- Runbook covering what breaks and what to do about it
Built with TypeScript, Postgres, Cloudflare Workers, GitHub Actions.
Questions people ask
Can you work with our existing backend?
Yes. A lot of this work is inheriting something that grew organically and making it safe to change: adding tests, fixing the database design, and automating deployments. I will give you an honest assessment of whether that is cheaper than rebuilding.
What database do you use?
Postgres by default. It is dependable, well understood, portable between providers, and there is no realistic scenario where a small or medium business outgrows it. I will use something else where there is a specific reason to.
What happens if you are unavailable later?
This is the right question to ask any independent contractor. Everything is documented, tested and deployed from a pipeline, in a repository you own, using mainstream technology any competent developer can pick up. Being replaceable is part of the deliverable.
Other things I build
Websites
Marketing sites that load fast, show up in search and turn visitors into enquiries. Designed for your business rather than bought as a theme.
Web applications
Dashboards, customer portals, booking systems and internal tools, with logins, permissions and an admin area your team will actually use.
Integrations
Connecting the tools you already pay for, like your CRM, payment provider, accounting and messaging, so nobody has to retype data between them.
Got something in mind?
A couple of sentences is enough. I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it, and if I am, what it will cost and how long it will take.
Cameron
Fixed price · I reply within one working day