Java and Spring Boot development
Predictable, observable, and hireable for as long as the system lives.
We build and maintain Spring Boot services on current long-term-support Java: REST APIs, message consumers, batch jobs, and integration layers sitting in front of systems nobody is allowed to replace. Containerised, instrumented, and covered by tests written before the refactor rather than after the incident.
What is Spring Boot, and who should actually be using it?
Java is a statically typed language on the JVM with an unusually strong record on backwards compatibility. Spring Boot is the framework that made it quick to build services with: dependency injection, web endpoints, data access, security, metrics and health checks configured by convention instead of by a thousand lines of XML.
Large organisations keep choosing it for unglamorous reasons. A Java service written eight years ago generally still compiles and runs. The operational tooling around the JVM, profilers, heap analysis, metrics, distributed tracing, is the most mature anything has. And you can hire Java developers in every market on earth, including the one your client is in. When a system will outlive the team that built it, those three facts beat developer convenience every time.
The language has moved too, whatever its reputation says. Records, sealed types, pattern matching and virtual threads removed most of the ceremony people used to mock. Virtual threads in particular make high-concurrency services straightforward without adopting a reactive programming model nobody on the team enjoys debugging. We build on LTS releases, because that is what your operations team, your security scanner and your support contract are all aligned to.
When we recommend it: an existing JVM estate, Kafka or another broker in the picture, batch processing over large datasets, or a regulated environment where auditability is a written requirement. When we do not: a small product API with two developers and a launch date. That is a Node or Laravel job and we will say so on the first call, even though Java work bills for longer.
What we build with Spring Boot
REST and event-driven services
Documented APIs and message consumers with idempotency, retry policy and dead-letter handling designed in on day one, not added after the first replay incident.
Integration layers over legacy systems
A clean, versioned API in front of a mainframe, an ageing ERP or a database schema that cannot be touched for contractual reasons.
Batch and scheduled processing
Spring Batch jobs for reconciliation, settlement, imports and reporting across datasets far too large for a request cycle.
Security and identity
OAuth and OpenID Connect through Spring Security, role and scope design, and audit logging that satisfies the person doing the review.
Observability and performance
Micrometer metrics, OpenTelemetry tracing and structured logs, then the profiling work to fix whatever they turn up.
Explore →Front-ends for Java backends
Angular or React interfaces over existing Spring APIs, with the client generated from the OpenAPI schema so the two cannot drift.
Explore →Our Java stack, by layer
Java compared with the alternatives
Spring Boot vs .NET
Both are enterprise platforms with long support horizons and serious tooling, and the technical comparison is close enough to be a waste of a workshop. Decide on estate and staffing. A JVM operations team, Kafka and Kubernetes point to Spring. Entra ID, SQL Server and Azure point to .NET. There is almost never a technical case for migrating an established system between them.
Spring Boot vs Node.js
Node starts faster, uses less memory per instance and shares a language with your front-end team. Spring wins on tooling maturity, batch processing, transactional correctness and the depth of the hiring pool five years out. For a platform meant to run until 2032, the second list matters more than the first.
Spring Boot vs Quarkus or Micronaut
Quarkus and Micronaut start faster and use less memory, which is real money in serverless or densely packed containers. Spring's ecosystem, documentation and hiring pool are far larger. Unless startup time is a constraint you have actually measured, we default to Spring and spend the difference on the application.
Java and Spring Boot, answered
Is Java still a good choice for new systems?
For long-lived, integration-heavy or regulated systems, yes. The language modernised, virtual threads removed most of the concurrency awkwardness, and nothing else matches the JVM's operational tooling or hiring pool. For a small marketing-facing product it is more platform than you need, and we would point you elsewhere.
Which Java version do you build on?
Whichever long-term-support release your security scanners, container base images and support contracts are aligned to. We move existing systems onto the current LTS rather than chasing every six-month release, because upgrading twice a year is a cost with no visible benefit to your users.
Can you work on our existing Spring application?
Yes. We start with whether the build is reproducible, then dependency and Spring version state, test coverage and observability. You get a prioritised plan out of that. Tests around the risky areas normally come before any feature work, which is not the fastest-looking first sprint but is the cheapest one.
Do you do Kafka and event-driven work?
Yes. Producers and consumers, schema management, idempotent handlers, the outbox pattern where a write and an event must be atomic, and dead-letter handling. That last one decides whether a bad message is a ticket in the morning or a page at 2 a.m.
Can you migrate a Java monolith to microservices?
We can, but the first meeting will be about whether you should. Most monolith pain is a module-boundary problem, and splitting it into services multiplies operational cost while leaving the boundaries just as wrong. Enforce the boundaries inside the monolith first, then extract only what genuinely scales or deploys on a different rhythm.
How do you staff Java work?
As a project team rather than an hourly role on the hire page. Send the scope and you get the team shape, the timeline and the rate in writing before anything starts.
Java system to extend, integrate or support?
Tell us what it does today and what it has to do next. You get an approach and an estimate, not a discovery phase invoice.