Website Backend development

My website needs a secure, well-structured backend built from the ground up. I have not yet fixed the tech stack, so you are free to propose Node.js with Express, Django, Ruby on Rails, or any comparable framework you feel will best balance performance, maintainability, and future scaling.

Core scope
• Design the full server-side architecture.
• Implement user authentication and role management, structured data persistence, and clean, versioned API endpoints that can be consumed by a separate frontend or mobile app.
• Set up a database schema (relational or NoSQL, depending on your proposed stack) and supply migration or seed scripts.
• Provide clear instructions for local setup, staging deployment, and production release, including environment variables and security best practices.

Acceptance criteria
• All endpoints respond with the expected JSON payloads and error handling.
• Authentication flow is tested end-to-end.
• Code is lint-clean, well commented, and checked into a Git repo I will provide.
• A brief README covers installation, build, test, and deploy steps.

Once the initial build is stable, I am open to a follow-up retainer for feature extensions and performance tuning.