Skip to main content
QuickHire

Notifications

You're all caught up

New updates, payments, and messages will land here as soon as they arrive.

Integration and Platform Engineering

API Modernisation and API-First Strategy

We migrate legacy SOAP services to REST and GraphQL, implement enterprise API gateways, and establish the governance, security, and monetisation foundations that turn your API portfolio into a strategic business asset.

ISO 27001SOC 2 ReadyNDA Day 1MSA AvailableIP Protection

Get Matched in 10 Minutes

Fill in the details PM calls you back to confirm.

No spam. PM calls within 10 minutes during business hours.

500+
Enterprise Clients
10,000+
Engineers Deployed
50+
Countries Served
99.4%
CSAT Score
48h
Team Assembly

The Challenge

Legacy APIs are stifling your digital transformation agenda

SOAP-era integrations, undocumented point-to-point connections, and fragile proprietary protocols are slowing every new initiative that depends on data exchange across your enterprise. Each new channel or partner integration compounds the technical debt, while security vulnerabilities in aging WS-* stacks increase regulatory exposure and audit risk.

68%
of enterprises cite legacy APIs as the top integration bottleneck
4x
longer integration cycles compared to REST-native platforms
$2.5M
average annual cost of maintaining aging SOAP integration layers
3x
more security incidents in organisations without API gateway enforcement

Why QuickHire

Why Enterprises Choose QuickHire

01

Migration Without Disruption

We use strangler-fig patterns and parallel-run validation so live consumers are never broken during migration. Every cut-over is coordinated with downstream teams on their own release schedule.

02

Enterprise-Grade Security Baseline

OAuth 2.0, OIDC federation, mTLS service mesh, and gateway-level threat protection are implemented as non-negotiable defaults, not optional add-ons. Security policies are enforced automatically in your CI/CD pipeline.

03

Contract-First Design Discipline

Every API begins as a reviewed OpenAPI or GraphQL schema before a line of implementation code is written. This front-loads design quality when change is still cheap and eliminates integration surprises at delivery time.

04

API Product and Monetisation Strategy

We help you identify which APIs have external revenue potential, design developer-friendly subscription tiers, and integrate your gateway with billing engines for metered charging. Your API portfolio becomes a product line, not just infrastructure.

05

Full Observability from Day One

OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing, real-time gateway dashboards, and consumer-level usage analytics are provisioned as part of every engagement. You have complete visibility before the first production consumer goes live.

06

Platform-Agnostic Expertise

Our engineers hold hands-on delivery experience across Kong, Apigee, AWS API Gateway, Azure APIM, and MuleSoft. We run a structured bake-off and produce a costed decision document so your platform selection is evidence-based rather than vendor-driven.

Challenges

Common Enterprise Pain Points

01

SOAP and Legacy Protocol Lock-In

Decades of SOAP services with complex WS-Security headers, WSDL contracts, and XML schema dependencies make migration risky without deep protocol expertise. Consumer systems that rely on legacy behaviour must be identified, tested, and migrated in a controlled sequence to avoid cascading failures.

02

Inconsistent Security Posture Across APIs

APIs built by different teams over many years accumulate inconsistent authentication patterns - API keys, basic auth, custom tokens, and absent authentication exist side by side. Establishing a uniform OAuth 2.0 and OIDC baseline across a heterogeneous estate requires both technical tooling and organisational change management.

03

Lack of Developer Discoverability

APIs that are undocumented or only documented in tribal knowledge within the owning team create bottlenecks every time a new consumer needs to integrate. Teams spend weeks in meetings extracting information that a developer portal would have delivered in minutes.

04

Rate Limiting and Quota Enforcement Gaps

Without a centralised gateway enforcing rate limits, a single misbehaving consumer can exhaust backend capacity and cascade failures to unrelated services. Retrofitting quota enforcement to existing APIs requires careful analysis of current traffic patterns to set limits that protect infrastructure without breaking legitimate consumers.

05

API Versioning Chaos

Ad hoc versioning strategies - or no versioning strategy at all - result in breaking changes that silently damage consumer integrations and erode trust. Establishing a consistent versioning governance model retroactively across a large portfolio requires both tooling automation and stakeholder alignment across multiple product teams.

Our Approach

A structured, phased programme that converts your API estate into a governed, secure, and monetisable platform

We deliver API modernisation as a fully integrated programme spanning migration, gateway implementation, security hardening, developer experience, and product strategy. Our phased approach ensures business continuity throughout while establishing the foundation for long-term API-first operating discipline.

01
API Estate Audit and Migration Planning
Automated discovery and manual review of all existing endpoints, WSDL contracts, integration patterns, and consumer dependencies produces a prioritised migration backlog with risk-adjusted sequencing.
02
Gateway Implementation and Policy Engineering
We deploy and configure your selected API gateway platform with rate limiting, authentication enforcement, request transformation, and routing policies aligned to your traffic patterns and SLA tiers.
03
Developer Portal and API Catalogue
A self-service developer portal with interactive documentation, sandbox environments, subscription management, and usage dashboards reduces consumer onboarding time and eliminates repetitive support requests from your integration team.
04
Security and Compliance Hardening
OAuth 2.0 authorisation server integration, OIDC federation with your IdP, mTLS service mesh configuration, JWT validation at the gateway, and SIEM integration establish a defence-in-depth security posture across every API endpoint.

Delivery Models

How We Deliver

Foundation Sprint

Gateway deployment, security baseline, and migration of highest-priority APIs to REST. Suitable for teams that need rapid credibility with stakeholders.

Timeline
8 weeks
Team Size
3-4 engineers
Full Modernisation Programme

End-to-end migration of the full API estate with developer portal, versioning governance, rate limiting, and observability. Covers all consumer cut-overs and decommissioning of legacy layers.

Timeline
16-24 weeks
Team Size
5-8 engineers
API Product and Monetisation Build

For organisations ready to externally productise APIs. Includes developer portal, billing engine integration, tiered subscription design, partner onboarding flows, and API analytics dashboards.

Timeline
12 weeks
Team Size
4-6 engineers

Capabilities

Technical Capability Matrix

Protocol Migration
SOAP to RESTSOAP to GraphQLEDI ModernisationXML to JSON TransformationgRPC Migration
API Gateway Platforms
Kong GatewayApigee X / HybridAWS API GatewayAzure API ManagementMuleSoft Anypoint
Security and Identity
OAuth 2.0 / PKCEOIDC FederationMutual TLS (mTLS)JWT ValidationAPI Threat Protection
Developer Experience
OpenAPI 3.1 AuthoringGraphQL Schema DesignDeveloper Portal (Backstage, Readme, Stoplight)Sandbox EnvironmentsAPI Changelog Automation

Engagement Models

How We Engage

Choose the model that fits your programme governance, budget cycle, and team structure.

01

Staff Augmentation

Engineers embed directly under your management.

Learn more →
02

Dedicated Developers

Full-time team aligned to your product roadmap.

Learn more →
03

Managed Teams

End-to-end delivery with SLA-backed outcomes.

Learn more →
04

Engineering Pods

Autonomous cross-functional pods per domain.

Learn more →
05

Offshore Dev Centre

Permanent engineering base in India. Full IP ownership.

Learn more →
06

Build-Operate-Transfer

We build and run it. You take ownership on schedule.

Learn more →

Our Process

From Discovery to Delivery

1

Discovery and Estate Audit

Days 1-5

Automated scanning and manual review of all existing APIs, integrations, and consumer dependencies. Outputs a risk-scored migration backlog and platform recommendation.

2

Architecture Design and Gateway Selection

Week 2

Contract-first API design workshops, gateway bake-off and TCO modelling, security architecture definition, and developer portal requirements scoping.

3

Gateway Deployment and Security Baseline

Weeks 3-5

Gateway infrastructure provisioned, core policies configured (auth, rate limiting, routing), and first migrated API endpoints deployed to staging with consumer validation.

4

Migration Execution and Consumer Cut-Over

Weeks 6-20

Phased migration of remaining APIs with parallel-run testing, consumer coordination, and progressive traffic shifting. Developer portal launched with full documentation.

5

Governance Handover and Continuous Improvement

Ongoing

API governance playbook delivered, team enablement completed, automated linting and review gates embedded in CI/CD, and monthly usage-based capacity reviews established.

Free Scoping Call

Not ready to book? Our PM calls back.

Tell us what's broken. We'll scope it for free and confirm the right expert no commitment.

PM available now

Get a fix plan
in 10 minutes.

No sales call. A real PM scopes your problem, recommends the right expert, and gives you the plan only book if it fits.

  • Free scoping call PM explains exactly how we fix it
  • No commitment hear the plan before you pay anything
  • Expert confirmed right skill match for your stack
R
P
A

47 PMs responded today

Get Matched in 10 Minutes

Fill in the details PM calls you back to confirm.

No spam. PM calls within 10 minutes during business hours.

Security & Compliance

Enterprise-Grade Security by Default

✓ISO 27001 Certified✓SOC 2 Type II Ready✓GDPR Compliant✓DPDP Act Ready✓NDA on Day 1✓MSA Available✓IP Assignment Clauses✓Escrow Options

Governance

Programme Governance

✓

API Design Review Gates

Every new or modified API passes a contract review against your OpenAPI style guide before implementation begins. Automated Spectral linting is enforced at pull-request time to catch violations before human review.

✓

Deprecation and Lifecycle Policy

Formal deprecation timelines, consumer impact analysis, and automated portal notifications ensure no API is retired without adequate warning. Legacy versions are sunset only after 100% of traffic has migrated.

✓

Security Audit and Penetration Testing

APIs are subjected to OWASP API Security Top 10 testing at each major release milestone. Findings are triaged by severity and remediated within defined SLA windows before production deployment.

✓

API Catalogue and Discoverability Standards

Every API in the portfolio is registered in a central catalogue with ownership metadata, SLA commitments, and deprecation status. Discoverability standards ensure developers can find and evaluate APIs without consulting the owning team.

Team Structure

Your Enterprise Team

Our API modernisation teams combine deep integration engineering expertise with API product strategy and developer experience design. Architects, security engineers, and platform specialists collaborate in embedded squads that work within your existing delivery structure.

✓API Architect
✓Integration Engineer
✓API Gateway Engineer
✓Security Engineer
✓Developer Experience Designer
✓GraphQL Specialist
✓DevOps and Platform Engineer
✓API Product Strategist

Project Lifecycle

From Kickoff to Production

01
1 week

Discovery

API estate inventory, consumer dependency map, risk-scored migration backlog, platform recommendation document.

02
2 weeks

Design

OpenAPI and GraphQL schema designs, gateway architecture diagram, security architecture specification, developer portal wireframes.

03
3-5 weeks

Foundation Build

Gateway deployed and configured, authentication and rate limiting policies live, first migrated APIs in staging with consumer sign-off.

04
8-16 weeks

Migration Execution

All APIs migrated to REST/GraphQL, developer portal live with full documentation, consumer cut-overs completed, legacy layers decommissioned.

05
Ongoing

Governance and Optimisation

Governance playbook, CI/CD policy gates, monthly observability reviews, quarterly API portfolio health reports.

Case Studies

Enterprise Outcomes

Financial Services

A regional bank needed to expose core banking capabilities to fintech partners without modifying mainframe systems.

We deployed Kong Gateway as a facade layer over COBOL-backed SOAP services, exposing clean REST APIs with OAuth 2.0 security and a partner developer portal that reduced partner onboarding from 12 weeks to 3 weeks.

75%reduction in partner onboarding time
Healthcare

A hospital group required a unified API layer across six acquired clinical systems to support a new patient-facing mobile application.

We delivered a GraphQL experience API backed by REST adapters for each clinical system, with OIDC-based single sign-on and field-level access control enforced at the schema layer, enabling the mobile app to launch on schedule.

$1.8Mavoided in custom integration rework
Logistics

A freight operator needed to monetise tracking and routing data by offering tiered API subscriptions to third-party logistics providers.

We implemented Apigee with tiered rate limiting, Stripe-based metered billing integration, and a self-service developer portal, converting an internal data asset into a direct revenue stream within 14 weeks.

4xreturn on API programme investment within 18 months

Start Your Engagement

Ready to Build Your Enterprise Engineering Team?

Speak with a solution architect. We scope your engagement together. No sales pressure, no commitment required.

Hiring Models

One platform, two ways to hire

Not ready for a long-term commitment? QuickHire Instant lets you book a vetted engineer in 10 minutes - no contracts required.

Both models use the same vetted talent network · PM always included · Multi-country billing

Frequently Asked Questions

An API modernisation engagement encompasses a full audit of existing integrations, SOAP-to-REST or SOAP-to-GraphQL migration, API gateway selection and implementation, developer portal setup, and security hardening using OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and mTLS. We also establish versioning conventions, rate-limiting policies, and a long-term API product roadmap. The engagement concludes with a handover playbook so your internal teams can operate and evolve the platform independently.
An API-first strategy treats every capability as a reusable product from day one, which dramatically reduces integration costs when new channels, partners, or internal services need to consume that capability. It enforces a contract-driven design discipline that catches breaking changes before code is written, reducing costly rework cycles. Enterprises that adopt API-first report faster time-to-market for new digital products and cleaner organisational boundaries between teams. The long-term compounding effect is a portfolio of stable, well-documented APIs that become genuine business assets.
Migration timelines depend on the number of SOAP endpoints, the complexity of WS-* security headers and WSDL contracts, and the availability of downstream consumer teams for coordination. A focused engagement covering 20 to 50 endpoints typically runs eight to fourteen weeks, including parallel-run validation and consumer cut-over. Larger programmes with hundreds of legacy services are phased over six to twelve months using a strangler-fig pattern so the business continues operating without disruption. We deliver a prioritised migration backlog in the first two weeks so stakeholders have full visibility.
Platform selection depends on your existing cloud footprint, team expertise, and commercial requirements. Kong is well-suited to multi-cloud and on-premise deployments where Kubernetes-native operation is a priority. Apigee excels in organisations that need advanced analytics, developer monetisation, and tight GCP integration. AWS API Gateway is the pragmatic choice when your workloads are already deeply embedded in the AWS ecosystem and you want minimal operational overhead. We run a structured gateway bake-off during the discovery phase to produce a decision document that accounts for your specific TCO, SLA, and vendor-lock-in tolerance.
REST follows a resource-oriented model where each endpoint maps to a discrete entity, making it straightforward to cache, version, and secure at the gateway layer. GraphQL exposes a single strongly-typed schema and lets consumers fetch exactly the fields they need, which is particularly valuable for mobile clients and data-heavy dashboards that would otherwise over-fetch or under-fetch from multiple REST calls. Most enterprise platforms benefit from a hybrid approach - REST for system-of-record integrations and partner APIs, GraphQL for experience-layer APIs consumed by web and mobile frontends. We help you define clear boundaries so both paradigms coexist without confusion.
We implement a versioning governance framework that combines URI versioning for major breaking changes, content negotiation for minor variants, and a formal deprecation policy with automated consumer-impact analysis. Every API change goes through a semantic versioning review gate before it reaches the gateway. Consumers receive advance deprecation notices through the developer portal, and we configure gateway-level routing so old and new versions coexist during the transition window. This structured approach eliminates the silent-breaking-change problem that plagues unmanaged API ecosystems.
API monetisation converts your API portfolio into a direct or indirect revenue stream by charging external developers, partners, or customers for access tiers based on call volume, data scope, or premium features. It involves defining product tiers, integrating the developer portal with a billing engine such as Stripe or Zuora, and configuring the gateway to enforce quota-based entitlements. Financial services, logistics, healthcare data platforms, and media organisations have all successfully productised APIs. We run a monetisation readiness assessment early in the engagement to identify which APIs have viable external demand before investing in billing infrastructure.
We implement a layered security model: OAuth 2.0 with PKCE for delegated authorisation flows, OIDC for identity federation with your existing IdP such as Okta, Azure AD, or Ping, and mutual TLS for service-to-service communication where client certificate verification is required. At the gateway layer, we add JWT validation, IP allowlisting, payload inspection, and bot-mitigation rules. All tokens are short-lived and rotated automatically, and we integrate with your SIEM so anomalous API call patterns trigger alerts within your existing security operations workflow.
A developer portal is a self-service hub where internal teams, partners, and external developers discover, understand, and subscribe to your APIs without needing to engage your integration team. It provides interactive documentation generated from OpenAPI or GraphQL schemas, sandbox environments with mock data, API key management, usage dashboards, and a support ticketing channel. Without a portal, adoption stalls because developers cannot self-onboard, and your API team spends disproportionate time on repetitive support requests. A well-run portal reduces time-to-first-call for new consumers from weeks to hours.
Rate limiting enforces per-client, per-tier, and per-endpoint quotas that protect your backend services from traffic spikes caused by misbehaving consumers, misconfigured clients, or deliberate abuse. We implement both hard limits that reject excess requests with a 429 response and soft throttling that degrades non-critical traffic gracefully while preserving capacity for priority consumers. Policy design covers burst capacity, daily quota windows, SLA-differentiated tiers, and circuit-breaker thresholds aligned with your backend capacity baselines. All limits are surfaced in the developer portal so consumers can self-manage their usage before hitting production walls.
Yes - we use a strangler-fig migration pattern where the new REST or GraphQL layer is deployed alongside the legacy SOAP service, with the API gateway routing consumers progressively from old to new endpoints. Dual-run testing validates that response payloads are semantically equivalent before any consumer is migrated. We instrument both layers with distributed tracing so any discrepancy is caught automatically rather than discovered by a downstream consumer in production. Consumers are migrated on a coordinated schedule that respects their own release windows, and the legacy layer is decommissioned only after 100% of traffic has moved.
Effective API governance for a large portfolio requires an API centre of excellence that owns design standards, security baselines, and lifecycle policy, combined with federated ownership where individual product teams retain autonomy over their domain APIs within those guardrails. We help you establish an OpenAPI-based design review process, automated linting with tools such as Spectral, and a central API catalogue that provides discoverability across the organisation. Governance checkpoints are embedded into your CI/CD pipeline so policy violations are caught at pull-request time rather than in production audits.
We instrument every API at the gateway and service layer with distributed tracing using OpenTelemetry, exporting spans to your preferred backend such as Datadog, Grafana Tempo, or AWS X-Ray. Gateway metrics including latency percentiles, error rates, and quota utilisation are pushed to a real-time dashboard with alerting thresholds tied to your SLA commitments. Consumer-level analytics are surfaced in the developer portal so each team can see their own usage patterns without requiring access to the centralised observability platform. Capacity planning reports are generated monthly from this telemetry to inform gateway scaling decisions.
Contract-first design means the OpenAPI or GraphQL schema is authored and reviewed before any implementation code is written, allowing consumer and provider teams to work in parallel against a shared, versioned contract. Code-first generates the schema from annotations in the implementation, which is faster initially but frequently results in poorly structured contracts that reflect implementation details rather than consumer needs. For enterprise programmes where multiple teams integrate against the same API, contract-first is the standard we enforce because it front-loads the design debate when change is cheap and eliminates integration surprises at delivery time.
Multi-cloud API gateway deployments require a control plane that can manage routing, security policies, and rate limits across clusters in different cloud providers or on-premise data centres from a single administrative interface. We typically deploy Kong Gateway or a federated Apigee hybrid configuration for these scenarios, with a shared certificate authority for mTLS and a centralised IdP federation layer so tokens issued in one cloud are accepted by services running in another. Traffic routing policies account for latency-based failover and data residency constraints. The design is tested under simulated cloud-partition failure scenarios before go-live.
Commercial considerations include per-call pricing versus flat subscription, the cost of API gateway nodes or vCPU allocations at your projected traffic volume, and whether the vendor charges separately for analytics, developer portal seats, or advanced security modules. Open-source options like Kong Community Edition eliminate licence fees but require your team to maintain the infrastructure and plugins. We produce a five-year TCO model during platform selection that accounts for operational labour, infrastructure hosting, and projected traffic growth so the cost comparison is apples-to-apples. Vendor exit strategies and data portability are also evaluated to ensure you avoid lock-in that would constrain future architectural decisions.
Industries
Financial ServicesHealthcareRetailLogisticsTelecommunications