BFF Layer on AWS

Context

Frontend teams were pulling from multiple services directly, causing over-fetching, inconsistent contracts, and slow page loads.

Problem

Multiple upstream APIs returned large payloads and inconsistent shapes, leading to slow rendering and repeated frontend transformation logic.

Goals

• Reduce payload size and speed up API response times.
• Create stable contracts for frontend teams.
• Centralize caching, auth, and error handling.

Responsibilities

• Designed the BFF contract and data aggregation strategy.
• Implemented Node.js/Express services with caching and retries.
• Instrumented observability for latency and error tracking.

Constraints

• Legacy APIs could not be changed quickly.
• Strict performance budgets for critical pages.
• Needed to support multiple frontend surfaces.

Approach

• Introduced an aggregation layer with normalized response shapes.
• Implemented caching and selective field mapping.
• Added service-level SLAs and monitoring dashboards.

Solution

• Deployed the BFF on AWS with autoscaling and health checks.
• Consolidated 10+ endpoints into a single frontend contract.
• Rolled out phased migration with backward compatibility.

Results

• Reduced payload size by 20% and improved response time by 40%.
• Simplified frontend data handling with consistent contracts.
• Improved reliability with centralized error handling.

Learnings

• Contracts are as important as performance wins.
• Observability must be built in from day one.
• Incremental migrations reduce risk and speed adoption.