Backend API Engineering Bootcamp Certificate

Checkpoint 1: Build a REST API with resource-oriented routes, explicit status codes and request/response schemas; reject malformed input with useful errors.
Checkpoint 2: Add durable persistence with a real database and data-access boundary; prove uniqueness, relationship and transaction behavior with edge cases.
Checkpoint 3: Implement password handling plus JWT or session auth; separate authentication from authorization and protect at least two permission levels.
Checkpoint 4: Create automated API tests for happy paths, invalid input, auth failures and database errors; run the suite through Postman/Newman or code-based tests.
Checkpoint 5: Place the service behind NGINX or an equivalent reverse proxy; add environment configuration, structured logs, health checks and graceful error handling.
Checkpoint 6: Load-test a representative endpoint, diagnose one bottleneck, make a measured improvement and document latency/throughput before and after.

Day 1: Choose a real workflow; define users, resources, routes, schemas, persistence model, auth boundaries, SLIs and acceptance criteria.
Day 2: Implement CRUD/data-access foundations with validation, consistent errors and a seeded local database; document the API contract.
Day 3: Add authentication and authorization; create attack/error cases for expired, missing and over-privileged credentials.
Day 4: Build automated unit/integration/API tests and a repeatable test-data strategy; include one regression from an intentionally introduced defect.
Day 5: Add reverse proxying, health endpoint, structured logs, rate/error handling and configuration/secrets discipline; containerize if useful.
Day 6: Run load/performance tests, trace a slow request through the stack, improve one bottleneck and simulate a dependency/database failure.
Day 7: Publish repo, OpenAPI/endpoint docs, schema diagram, test evidence, performance results, deployment/runbook, failure postmortem and demo video.