GraphQL in the Real World: How SEEK Powers Modern Apps (with Mark Cheeseman)

Seeing GraphQL everywhere at SEEK and wondering what it actually buys you? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, host Seamus Kearney is joined by Nik Skoufis, Reyna Tan and special guest Mark Cheesman to unpack how SEEK uses GraphQL across candidate and hirer systems – from the early “shared free‑for‑all” graph to today’s curated, high‑scale platform. They dig into what GraphQL really is (a query language and graph executor, not “just an API”), how resolvers and data sources work under the hood, and why SEEK leans on GraphQL to power experience APIs for web and mobile instead of hand‑rolling bespoke REST layers. This episode's special guest: Mark Cheeseman (SEEK Staff Engineer) In this episode, we explore: • What GraphQL actually is (beyond “an API”) – a query language and execution engine that turns your request into a graph and traverses it, not just “REST with curly braces” – and why it doesn’t even need HTTP under the hood. • Why SEEK moved from REST experience APIs to GraphQL – unifying messy mobile and web backends, replacing one-off “backend-for-frontend” services with a flexible query layer so clients can build their own experience APIs on every request. • Resolvers, data sources & performance at scale – how resolvers map to REST APIs, S3, caches and in-memory data, why SEEK prefers field-level resolvers and data-source caching, and how graph theory and query-complexity limits protect against “select * from everything” type queries. • Security, rate limiting & degraded behaviour – preventing scraping and abusive queries, using query-level rules on top of IP-based rate limiting, and designing for graceful degradation when upstream services are slow or down instead of treating the site as simply “up or down”. • Custodianship, observability & culture – why a shared graph needs an owning team, how SEEK uses OpenTelemetry, Datadog and custom metrics to see who’s calling what, find hotspots and retire unused fields, and how pairing and “graph custodians” help other teams onboard safely. If you’re a frontend, backend or full‑stack engineer trying to decide when GraphQL is worth it – or just want to understand SEEK’s graph stack better – this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode