I’m spinning up a new service and need a seasoned hand to build the production-ready backend. The heart of the stack is Python, but I’m comfortable if you weave in Node.js, TypeScript, or Golang for specific components. Here’s the core of what I’m looking for: design and code robust REST (or GraphQL) APIs, model and tune the database layer, and wire in secure user authentication. Everything will live on AWS—think RDS, ECS/Fargate or Lambda—so you’ll also set up the infrastructure as code and an automated CI/CD pipeline that ships with confidence every time a change lands on main. Deliverables • Clean, well-documented backend codebase • OpenAPI spec plus Postman (or similar) collection • Database migration scripts and seed data • Auth module integrated with AWS Cognito (or an approach you propose) • Terraform (or CloudFormation) files and GitHub Actions workflow enabling zero-downtime deploys • README covering local setup, testing, and deployment Acceptance criteria: the stack deploys into my AWS account, automated tests green-light in CI, and the public endpoints respond without error. I’ve got the product spec and rough schema ready; what’s missing is your expertise turning it all into a resilient service. If things go smoothly there’s future work on the frontend, but right now the backend is the mission. Drop a brief note on similar projects you’ve shipped and your earliest start date—let’s get building.