Backend and API development in Melbourne
Melbourne built two of Australia's biggest online marketplaces, and a lot of the city's startups still follow the pattern: listings, search, messaging between two sides, and payments in the middle. The backend problems arrive in a familiar order. Search that was fine at ten thousand listings slows at a million, messages between buyers and sellers need moderating, and payments between two parties bring questions about holding, splitting and releasing money that a simple checkout never raised.
We work on that backend: search indexes tuned to the queries people actually run, messaging with moderation that runs behind the user rather than in front of them, and payment flows that hold money correctly between parties. Amour, our own app, reviews every photo and first message before anyone else sees it without making users wait, and that same pattern carries straight over to marketplaces.
Melbourne's software market is built on products rather than projects. SEEK, REA Group and MYOB run from the city, Culture Amp started here, and a generation of engineers learned their trade inside marketplaces and SaaS businesses that sell well beyond Australia. The SaaS companies we hear from have usually found their market and are now paying for early decisions: a data model that assumed one customer type, permissions that started as a role column, and infrastructure in a single region when their newest customers are in the US or Europe.
Health and education are the other two pillars. The Melbourne Biomedical Precinct around Parkville brings together hospitals, research institutes, biotech firms and universities, and they need registries, trial platforms, patient apps and operational tools that handle sensitive records carefully and still suit a busy clinician between patients. The universities (Melbourne, Monash, RMIT and the rest) run student systems, learning platforms and research data at a scale that rarely fits off-the-shelf software, and their students judge every portal against the apps on their phones. And the Port of Melbourne keeps a large freight and logistics industry busy, much of it still run on email and spreadsheets.
Hiring costs a little less than in Sydney. Indeed puts the average base salary for a software engineer in Melbourne at A$109,570, from 329 reported salaries, and the engineers who have already scaled a product are the ones every scale-up wants at the same time. A platform problem can sit on the roadmap for quarters while that hire is found. That is where we fit: senior engineers on a defined piece of work within days, with the code in your repositories from the first commit.
Our four hours of daily overlap land in your afternoon, and we move them to suit your team. Your morning stays with your own people, and the afternoon is when you talk to the engineer writing your code, in stand-ups, reviews and design decisions. Runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go, so the work stays readable long after the engagement ends.
We are the right fit for a platform problem your product team has no time for, a defined piece of work with a clear end, or the months before your own hires start. Senior engineers arrive within days, the first piece is a fixed-price two weeks, and agencies can put the work under their own name.
Four ways this arrives.
We read the code, write down what it does versus what everyone believes it does, and give you the list of the five things most likely to page someone at night. Then we fix those first.
Usually queries, not architecture. We profile under real traffic, fix the plans and the indexes, and only then discuss whether anything needs splitting apart.
A mobile client, a partner integration, a public API. We design the contract first, version it properly, and write the docs your consumers will read.
Jobs that silently vanish, retries that duplicate charges, a queue nobody monitors. We make it idempotent, observable, and boring.
A moderated messaging backend where sends acknowledge in-band and the review runs behind them.
Read the write-up →Asked by Melbourne teams.
How do you work with teams in Melbourne?+
We are in Bengaluru, and four hours of every working day overlap with your afternoon, moved to suit your team. Stand-ups, code reviews and design calls happen live in that window, so your mornings stay with your own people. We work in your tools, whether that is Slack, GitHub or Linear, and the person on every call is the engineer who writes the code.
Do you build for Melbourne SaaS and marketplace companies?+
Yes, and it is the work Melbourne asks for most. We untangle data models that assumed one customer type, turn a role column into proper permissions, add single sign-on and a second region for the first large overseas customer, and tune search and messaging for marketplaces that have outgrown their first version. We work inside your codebase, alongside your product engineers, starting with whatever is slowing them down most.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Melbourne?+
Indeed puts the average base salary for a software engineer in Melbourne at around A$110,000. Our published rate is $35/hour with a $5,000 minimum, or $5,400 a month for one embedded engineer. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and work can start within days of the call. The first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement at $2,800, so you can judge us on what ships.
Can you work white-label for a Melbourne agency?+
Yes. If your agency wins more build work than your developers can carry, we work under your name. Your client sees your team and your process, we join calls as your engineers, and the code goes into your client's repositories from the first commit. You keep the client relationship. An NDA is signed before you share anything specific, and the runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go.
Can you work in our existing codebase?+
Yes, and it is most of what we do. We do not require a rewrite as a condition of working with you. If we think a rewrite is genuinely the right call we will say so, with the reasoning and the cost, and you can decide.
What if the backend is in a language you do not list?+
Then we will tell you. We are useful in Node, Python and TypeScript. We can read Go and PHP well enough to migrate off them. We would not take a Rust or Elixir project and learn it on your budget.
Do you write tests?+
For anything with money, permissions or data loss in it, yes. We do not chase a coverage number. We will tell you which parts are covered and which are not in the handover notes.
Who owns the code?+
You do, from the first commit. Repositories live in your organisation. If we set them up, we transfer them before the first invoice.
What happens when the engagement ends?+
You get runbooks, architecture notes and a recorded walkthrough. We stay available for questions for a month at no cost, because a handover that needs us on retainer is not a handover.