API Development & Integration
We design and build APIs that connect your systems, power your products, and scale without breaking.
Every modern software product is really a collection of APIs talking to each other. Whether you need a public-facing API for partners, an internal API to connect microservices, or integrations with third-party platforms like Stripe, Salesforce, or Shopify, the quality of your API layer determines the quality of everything built on top of it.
At Scale Labs, we build APIs that are fast, well-documented, and designed for the real world — where traffic spikes happen, third-party services go down, and requirements change quarterly. We work with RESTful, GraphQL, and event-driven architectures depending on what your system actually needs, not what is trendiest.
We have helped companies across the US build API infrastructure that handles millions of requests per day with sub-100ms response times. From initial schema design through to rate limiting, authentication, and monitoring, we own the full lifecycle.
What You Get
RESTful API Design
Resource-oriented APIs with proper HTTP semantics, versioning strategies, and consistent error handling that developers actually enjoy working with.
GraphQL Implementation
Schema-first GraphQL APIs with DataLoader batching, persisted queries, and complexity analysis to prevent expensive operations from taking down your server.
Third-Party Integration
Production-grade integrations with platforms like Stripe, Twilio, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Shopify — including retry logic, webhook verification, and idempotency.
API Documentation
Auto-generated OpenAPI/Swagger docs, Postman collections, and developer guides that keep your API accessible and adoptable.
Authentication & Security
OAuth 2.0, API key management, JWT tokens, rate limiting, and request signing — implemented correctly, not bolted on as an afterthought.
Monitoring & Observability
Request tracing, latency percentiles, error rate dashboards, and alerting so you know when something is wrong before your users do.
Our Approach to API Design
Good API design starts with understanding who will consume the API and how. A mobile app hitting your API over cellular has very different needs than a backend service making server-to-server calls. We start every project by mapping out the consumers, their access patterns, and their performance expectations.
We follow contract-first design — the API schema is defined and agreed upon before implementation begins. This lets frontend and backend teams work in parallel, catches design problems early, and produces APIs that are consistent and predictable.
For REST APIs, we use OpenAPI 3.1 specifications. For GraphQL, we use SDL-first schema design with code generation. Both approaches produce machine-readable contracts that drive documentation, client generation, and testing automatically.
Integration Architecture That Handles Failure
Third-party integrations fail. Stripe has outages. Webhook deliveries get dropped. OAuth tokens expire at the worst possible moment. The difference between a fragile integration and a production-grade one is entirely about how you handle these failures.
We build integrations with circuit breakers, exponential backoff with jitter, dead letter queues for failed webhook processing, and idempotency keys to prevent duplicate operations. When a third-party service goes down, your system degrades gracefully instead of falling over.
For event-driven architectures, we implement reliable message processing with tools like BullMQ, Amazon SQS, or Google Cloud Pub/Sub — choosing the right tool based on your existing infrastructure and throughput requirements.
Performance and Reliability at Scale
API performance is not just about fast code — it is about smart caching, efficient database queries, and appropriate use of connection pooling. We implement multi-layer caching with Redis, CDN-level caching for public endpoints, and stale-while-revalidate patterns that keep response times low even under heavy load.
For high-throughput APIs, we design with horizontal scaling in mind from day one. Stateless services, distributed rate limiting with Redis, and database read replicas ensure your API can handle traffic spikes without architectural changes. Every API we build includes comprehensive testing: unit tests for business logic, integration tests against real databases, contract tests to catch breaking changes, and load tests with k6 to verify performance under pressure.
Technologies We Use
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I use REST or GraphQL for my API?
How do you handle API versioning?
Can you integrate with our existing systems?
What does API development typically cost?
How long does an API project take?
Need an API That Actually Scales?
Tell us about your integration challenges. We will design an API architecture that connects your systems reliably and performs under pressure.