Backends that other systems can actually depend on.
Bad APIs are invisible until they're not — and by then you have twelve systems depending on behaviour that was never meant to be a contract. We design API layers the way infrastructure teams do: explicit versioning, documented contracts, rate-limiting, and failure modes that don't cascade. Whether you need a single REST API or an event-driven microservices mesh, we build it to be trusted.
What's included
- REST & GraphQL APIs
- Event-driven architecture
- API gateway & rate-limiting
- OpenAPI 3.0 documentation
- Service-to-service auth
- Webhook infrastructure
How we deliver
- 1API design & contract review
- 2Service decomposition map
- 3Implementation & integration testing
- 4OpenAPI / Swagger docs
- 5Performance & load benchmarks
Technologies we use
- Node.js
- Go
- Python
- REST
- GraphQL
- gRPC
- Kafka
- RabbitMQ
- Kong
- AWS API Gateway
- OpenAPI 3.0
- Redis
Why Origin for API & Microservices
Contract-first, always
We design the API contract before writing implementation code. This gives frontend teams something to build against and prevents interface drift.
Failure modes designed upfront
Rate limits, circuit breakers, retry policies, and graceful degradation are part of the design phase — not discovered in production.
Documentation that developers actually use
OpenAPI specs, developer changelogs, example payloads, and error code references. If an integration partner can't self-serve, the docs have failed.
Industries we serve
“Their API design review caught three issues that would have broken our partner integrations on launch day. The OpenAPI docs they delivered are the best we've ever received.”
Frequently asked questions
- Should we build a monolith first or go microservices from the start?
- Usually monolith first. Microservices solve organisational and scaling problems you probably don't have yet. A well-structured monolith with clear internal boundaries is easier to build, test, and debug — and can be decomposed later when you actually hit the problems microservices solve. We'll tell you honestly when you're at that point.
- What API documentation do you produce?
- OpenAPI 3.0 specs with full schema definitions, example requests, error codes, and authentication flows. We also maintain a developer changelog so integration partners know what changed between versions. If you're building a public API, we set up a hosted developer portal using Swagger UI or Redocly.
- How do you handle API versioning?
- URL path versioning (/v1/, /v2/) for public APIs — it's explicit and easy to proxy. For internal APIs, we use semantic versioning with deprecation notices and a migration period. We never break APIs without advance notice and a clear cutover path.
- Can you build event-driven systems as well as request-response APIs?
- Yes. For workflows that don't need a synchronous response — notifications, data pipeline triggers, audit events, inter-service communication at scale — event-driven architecture is cleaner and more resilient. We use Kafka for high-throughput or multi-consumer scenarios and RabbitMQ for simpler task queues.
- We have an existing API that's undocumented and fragile — can you fix it without breaking our integrations?
- We've done exactly this. The process starts with reverse-engineering the existing contract from logs and integration tests, then writing characterisation tests to lock down current behaviour before touching anything. Once the safety net is in place, we refactor, document, and add the missing pieces.