backend-engineer_skill

Overview

This skill guides backend engineers through understanding product requirements and implementing robust backend services. It focuses on business domain modeling, data processing logic, and delivering production-ready APIs and persistence. The goal is clear: translate product specs into maintainable, performant backend systems.

How this skill works

The skill inspects product feature lists, functional specifications, data model diagrams, and API requirements to produce domain models, API designs, and implementation plans. It walks through entity identification, domain-driven modeling, database schema design, and service implementation steps. It also recommends testing, performance optimization, and deployment-ready artifacts like API docs and migration scripts.

When to use it

• When you receive product requirements and need to design backend features
• When you must model business entities and relationships
• When designing APIs and database schemas for a new service
• When implementing business logic, persistence, and caching
• When preparing backend code for review, testing, and deployment

Best practices

• Start by deeply understanding the business process before coding
• Model entities and aggregates to enforce consistency boundaries (DDD)
• Design RESTful APIs with clear resource paths and standard HTTP semantics
• Choose storage based on access patterns: relational for transactions, document stores for flexible schemas
• Implement caching and query optimization early for heavy-read scenarios
• Write unit and integration tests, and include API documentation and migration plans

Example use cases

• Implement an export-reporting backend: identify aggregates, design export job API, use async processing and file storage
• Build a product search service: design search API, integrate Elasticsearch, cache popular queries
• Design a transactional order service: model order aggregate, design REST endpoints, ensure transactional integrity
• Create a user management service: schema design, authentication hooks, audit logging
• Add caching layer to a read-heavy service and optimize slow queries