Backend & API architecture
Service boundaries, RESTful APIs, reusable PSR‑4 packages. Designing the seams up front so the next five features don’t each turn into a negotiation.
Available for contract, fractional and full-time work
Backend systems that stay easy to change.
I’m Richard Mowatt. For 20+ years I’ve built and led production backends across healthcare, ad‑tech and eCommerce. Most of that work comes down to one thing: taking a system that grew sideways and giving it seams a team can build against.
What I do
Three problems I get called for
Legacy modernization
Decoupling a monolith in place, while the business keeps shipping. I’ve done this twice at scale, at gen.video and at Dell EMC, without a stop‑the‑world rewrite.
Search & data layers
Elasticsearch over legacy data, ingestion pipelines, faceted discovery APIs, index mappings and query tuning that hold up on real dataset sizes.
Health Recovery Solutions
Warehousing system rewrite
Architected the replacement from the ground up, in a shape that let the business move off NetSuite onto Stratix with almost no seam showing.
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gen.videoProprietary CMS to SOA
Split a legacy CMS into RESTful services with a dedicated Elasticsearch layer underneath discovery and filtering.
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Health Recovery SolutionsOutcomes platform architecture
Owned backend direction for a healthcare outcomes platform and a team of five, on Lumen microservices and shared packages.
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“He’d then build flexible frameworks that solved not only the current challenge but the next ones likely to appear.”
Bill HildeboltCo-founder, gen.video
“His ability to scope tickets accurately, identify technical dependencies, and break work into clear, manageable tasks helped both the engineering and QA teams plan effectively…”
Usama (Sam) InamQA Lead, Health Recovery Solutions
“I hired Richard as a freelancer and quickly realized he would be a great permanent addition to the team.”
Richard StantonOperating Partner, Apollo
Projects
What I build when nobody assigns it
Owned end to end — code, Terraform, boxes, DNS. All three → · github.com/rbmowatt →
glazewave.com
Surf session analytics
Node, React and Elasticsearch on a single ARM box in AWS, provisioned with Terraform and run for about $15 a month.
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rbmowatt/baseAPI scaffolding for Laravel
Response envelope, query parser and CRUD layer for new services. PHPStan level 5, default‑deny filtering, first commit 2020.
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gringoassist.mxA WhatsApp assistant
Chacho translates both sides of a conversation inline for non‑Spanish speakers in Baja Sur. Laravel on a Terraform‑built LAMP box.
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Contact
Got a system that’s getting harder to change?
Tell me what it does today and what you need it to do next. I’ll tell you straight whether I’m the right person for it.
Remote, with US hours overlap from La Paz, Mexico.