I need a seasoned Laravel developer to architect and code a set of secure, well-documented RESTful APIs that manage user data. Beyond simply wiring up endpoints, the job revolves around ensuring the platform stays responsive under heavy traffic and scales elegantly as usage grows. Key responsibilities include configuring rate limiting, caching layers, queue workers, and database optimization so that both request throughput and data-storage efficiency remain high even during traffic spikes. I expect clean, version-controlled code, migration files, and thorough Swagger/OpenAPI docs so the front-end team can plug in quickly. Familiarity with React or Next .js is a welcome bonus; you’ll occasionally collaborate with them to confirm responses, headers, and authentication flows line up with their expectations. Deliverables • Production-ready Laravel project with user-focused REST endpoints • Robust middleware for auth, throttling, and detailed logging • Scalable architecture decisions documented (load balancer strategy, cache/store selection, queue setup) • Database schema and migration scripts tuned for fast read/write under high load • Postman or Swagger collection demonstrating every route and payload • Deployment guide outlining horizontal scaling steps and environment variables Acceptance criteria – All endpoints sustain simulated peak traffic without error (>95% of requests under 300 ms on my test). – Data integrity verified across concurrent sessions. – Codebase passes static analysis and unit tests we’ll run during review. If you have proven experience hardening Laravel backends for high-traffic applications and can show previous benchmarks or case studies, I’d love to see them along with your proposal.