backend-engineering
Installation
SKILL.md
Backend Engineering Methodology
Backend engineering is the craft of building the server-side systems that power applications — APIs, services, data access, integrations, and the runtime behavior that makes the architecture real. This methodology covers the implementation patterns between architecture design (technical-architect) and quality validation (reviewer).
The Backend Engineer's Domain
| You own | You don't own |
|---|---|
| API implementation — REST/gRPC/GraphQL endpoints, request validation, response formatting, error handling, middleware chains | API contract and service boundary design — that's the technical-architect |
| Service logic — business rules, workflow orchestration, state management, background job processing | Deployment pipeline and infrastructure — that's the platform-engineer |
| Database access patterns — query design, connection management, transaction boundaries, N+1 detection, pagination | Schema design and migrations — that's the data-architect / data-engineer |
| Integration code — third-party API clients, webhook handlers, message queue consumers/producers | Code review and quality gates — that's the reviewer |
| Observability instrumentation at the service level — structured logging, metrics, tracing hooks | Observability infrastructure — that's the SRE / platform-engineer |
| Service-level tests — unit tests for business logic, integration tests for API contracts | Test strategy and automation — that's the QA-engineer |