Backend API Design for Frontend Consumption Questions

Design APIs specifically considering frontend needs rather than just backend convenience. This includes: GraphQL vs. REST trade-offs, field-based vs. endpoint-based APIs, efficient data loading patterns (avoiding N+1 queries), pagination strategies, filtering and sorting, representing relationships between resources, versioning for frontend compatibility, and rate limiting. At Staff Level, understand how API design affects frontend development velocity: should you expose low-level APIs and let the frontend compose queries, or should you provide high-level endpoints tailored to specific UI needs? Understand BFF (Backend For Frontend) pattern and when it's valuable. Master concepts like query optimization and how to structure APIs to minimize network requests.