I help SaaS teams fix slow, unreliable APIs without rewriting everything.
Improve performance, reduce incidents, and ship faster — with a practical approach to API diagnosis, stabilisation, and technical decision-making.
Your API is probably slowing the team down in more ways than one.
Latency spikes, brittle integrations, inconsistent behaviour across environments — these problems compound. The team stops trusting the system. Debugging slows. Confidence in releases erodes. I work with SaaS teams to diagnose the actual failure points, fix the riskiest ones first, and leave behind standards the team can own permanently.
Why teams trust me
years solving messy software problems
From frontline systems thinking to leading engineering teams under real delivery pressure.
developers reached through articles and education
Authority built on practical writing, talks, and hands-on delivery work.
talks and workshops delivered internationally
Helping teams make better API, architecture, and enablement decisions.
Your API is probably slowing the team down in more ways than one.
When the platform is unreliable, the damage is not just technical. Engineers lose confidence, product work slows down, and delivery becomes dominated by caution and context switching.
You're firefighting instead of building
Latency spikes, brittle integrations, and unclear ownership keep dragging engineers back into incident mode.
Your team doesn't trust the system
Every release feels risky because API behaviour is inconsistent, debugging is slow, and the root causes stay murky.
The rewrite feels bigger than the fix
You know the platform needs attention, but replacing everything would slow delivery even more.
How I work
An API Stability Framework built around diagnose, stabilise, and scale.
The goal is not consulting theatre. Get clear on what is actually broken, fix the highest-leverage issues first, and leave the team with better habits than it had before.
Diagnose
Map the hotspots, instrumentation gaps, and reliability failures that are actually costing you time.
Stabilise
Fix the riskiest endpoints, contracts, and operational bottlenecks first so the team can breathe again.
Scale
Leave behind patterns, guardrails, and decision-making habits the team can keep using without me in the room.
Trusted by teams
"Steve is one of the most thorough and thoughtful educators I've seen. He puts in a ton of effort and it clearly shows."
Aaron Francis
Founder, Try Hard Studios
"Steve is the teacher you wish you had in school. He’s informative, entertaining, and passionate about what he does. I’m always excited to see more of Steve’s content!"
Alex Six
Senior Software Engineer, Zillow
"To me, there's one word that comes to mind: 'passion'. There are only a handful of people with the same passion for programming as Steve."
Brent Roose
Developer Advocate, JetBrains
"Steve is a great developer with a wealth of knowledge that has contributed to many projects we have. His passion for API means we benefit from his aim for the best."
Chris Miller
Team Lead, PHP Architect
Three ways to work together
Without bloated consulting packages.
API Audit
A focused investigation into the performance, reliability, and design issues slowing your team down.
Clear action plan, prioritised fixes, faster route to stability.
Performance & Reliability Fixes
Hands-on work to remove bottlenecks, reduce avoidable incidents, and make delivery feel calmer.
Meaningful improvements without a costly full rewrite.
Ongoing Advisory
Strategic technical support for leaders and senior engineers making difficult API and architecture decisions.
Sharper technical calls, stronger standards, trusted perspective.
Ready to stop losing time to API instability?
Send a little context on the team, the symptoms, and what good looks like. I'll tell you whether an audit, a fix sprint, or ongoing advisory is the right next step.