Node.js consultant for backends that are slow, leaky, or unclear
Written audit covering event loop, queries, queues, memory. Delivered by someone who ran Node at $1B+ unicorn scale.
Who this is for
Engineering manager whose Node.js backend is slow, leaking memory, or hitting scale limits.
The pain today
- The team is guessing at performance with no profiling baseline.
- Memory usage climbs until the process restarts.
- Slow endpoints have never been measured — only complained about.
- Leadership wants to know if this scales or if it needs a rewrite.
The outcome you get
- A written Node.js audit covering event loop, queries, queues, memory.
- A prioritized fix list with hours per item.
- A clear scale-vs-rewrite recommendation.
- Optional implementation follow-up.
What the Node.js audit covers
The Node.js audit profiles the running system: event-loop lag under load (clinic.js doctor, 0x), query performance (slow-query log, Prisma metrics, database EXPLAIN plans for the top 20 queries), queue health (BullMQ dashboard, retry rates, dead-letter depth), memory profile (heapdump analysis, leak detection on representative traffic), response-time distribution (p50, p95, p99), and deploy topology (node instances, autoscaling, health-check discipline). Each finding lands with severity, business-cost framing (dollars per month on cloud, engineer hours, uptime risk), and hours to fix.
bolttech as the scale reference
bolttech Payment Service ran NestJS plus Node.js across 40+ payment provider integrations with 99.9% uptime on payment traffic. Scale decisions there — how to split workers from API processes, when to introduce a queue, how to handle provider retries without overwhelming downstream systems — are the reference I bring to audits. If your Node.js backend is trying to decide 'do I scale or do I rewrite', that production reference is where the recommendation grounds.
Three fixes that show up in almost every Node audit
Fix one: move synchronous work out of the request handler. Crypto, large JSON parse, file I/O belong on workers or worker_threads. Fix two: add a queue for anything slower than 200ms that does not need to return inline — email, webhooks, indexing, report generation. BullMQ on Redis is the default. Fix three: add structured logging plus a Sentry-grade error tracker plus basic Prometheus metrics. You cannot fix what you cannot see. These three together usually clear 60 to 80% of reported performance problems before any algorithmic change.
Pricing and deliverable
Advisory engagement at $4,500 per month (pro-rated for 1 to 4 week scope). Deliverables: written audit report, prioritized fix list with hours, one 60-minute debrief call with leadership, 2-week follow-up. If implementation is needed the Applications subscription at $3,499 per month covers it. Many teams do the audit first and hand the fix list to an in-house engineer.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Unified payment orchestration across Asia and Europe
Delivered the payment orchestration platform at bolttech, a $1B+ unicorn, with 40+ integrations across multiple regions.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- How long does the audit take?
- 1 to 4 weeks. A mid-size Node.js backend with tests takes 2 weeks. A larger or untested codebase takes 4.
- Do you need production access?
- Read-only monitoring plus a week of logs plus one or two days of p95 traffic samples is enough. I do not need write access to production databases.
- Can you benchmark against a competitor?
- Yes. k6 or Artillery load tests against both your service and a comparable competitor endpoint, with a written comparison.
- Will the audit recommend a rewrite?
- Rarely. Most Node.js audits I run recommend a targeted refactor plus an observability baseline, not a rewrite. Rewrites are reserved for pre-TypeScript codebases older than 6 years or frameworks long out of support.
- What about Deno or Bun?
- I have tested both and have opinions, but I do not recommend migrating a production Node.js service to Deno or Bun in 2026 unless the team has a specific reason. Node 20 plus TypeScript is still the pragmatic default.
Ready to start?
Tell me what you need in 60 seconds. Tailored proposal in your inbox within 6 hours.