Web performance consultant for Datadog
Diagnose backend bottlenecks with Datadog APM
PageSpeed audits the frontend. The backend stays invisible. I work through Datadog APM traces to surface slow SQL queries, blocking third-party calls and application hotspots that quietly drift your TTFB.
They trust me
Symptoms that justify a Datadog diagnosis
Every mission starts from observable signals — user-side or team-side. Datadog is the tool to explain them.
⏱️ TTFB above 600ms on strategic pages
PageSpeed flags a red TTFB without giving the cause. Datadog traces immediately surface the un-indexed SQL call, the third-party service timing out, or the costly deserialization weighing on response time.
📉 Core Web Vitals stuck despite frontend optimizations
Decent Lighthouse score, optimized images, minified JS, and LCP still at 4 seconds. The backend takes 2 seconds to render the HTML — a classic symptom of technical debt invisible without APM.
🐌 Backend P95 drifting after a release
The average stays acceptable but the worst sessions explode. Datadog traces on the outliers reveal an unspotted pre-prod regression, a missing index post-migration, or a fallback firing at the wrong time.
🔌 Third-party services lengthening the chain
Synchronous authentication, fraud scoring, marketing webhooks, remote cache: Datadog Service Map makes them visible and quantified. We desync, we cache, we move client-side when possible.
🚨 Silent exceptions slowing things without breaking them
Try/catch swallowing errors in loops, retries multiplying calls, slow fallback paths. Datadog Error Tracking and continuous profiling expose them — the slow code synthetic tools never reproduce.
💸 Traffic spikes degrading everyone with no clear cause
A backend service hitting saturation contaminates the whole stack. Datadog continuous profiling pinpoints the hot CPU method and the allocation pattern triggering garbage collection — where logs alone would never suffice.
Backend optimization methodology with Datadog
4 steps to transform your performance
1. Critical endpoint performance scoping
Identify endpoints serving strategic (LCP-critical) pages. Analyze P50/P95/P99 per template, focus on outliers and post-deployment variations.
2. Hotspot extraction
Service Map, flame graphs, distributed traces: surface the five to ten hotspots that actually weigh on perceived TTFB.
3. Targeted, measurable optimization
Query refactor, index addition, targeted caching (Redis, fragment cache), desync of third-party calls, parallelization of independent dependencies, opcache tuning where relevant.
4. Before/after measurement in Datadog
Validate TTFB gains on real traces before shipping. Any gain that can't be measured gets rejected.
1. Critical endpoint performance scoping
Identify endpoints serving strategic (LCP-critical) pages. Analyze P50/P95/P99 per template, focus on outliers and post-deployment variations.
2. Hotspot extraction
Service Map, flame graphs, distributed traces: surface the five to ten hotspots that actually weigh on perceived TTFB.
3. Targeted, measurable optimization
Query refactor, index addition, targeted caching (Redis, fragment cache), desync of third-party calls, parallelization of independent dependencies, opcache tuning where relevant.
4. Before/after measurement in Datadog
Validate TTFB gains on real traces before shipping. Any gain that can't be measured gets rejected.
Mission commitments
Frequently asked questions
Why go through Datadog to optimize web performance?
Do you need Datadog already in place?
Datadog APM vs New Relic vs Dynatrace: does it change the diagnosis?
How are your Datadog engagements structured?
Bring your backend TTFB down with Datadog
Data 2023-2026
What my clients say
Excellent work.
Paul has significantly improved the site's speed and perfectly aligned it with Google's recommendations.
Professional, thorough, and efficient, I highly recommend.
Nicolas - April Moto
Digital & E-commerce Director
We are very satisfied with Paul's work. He is quick, available, and particularly effective. Since his arrival, very good results have been observed, both in terms of performance and responsiveness. A real asset for our team.
Léo - Luxury brand
E-commerce Product Owner
I don't know if we've said it enough.
But if you want to improve your loading speed,
Make Google happy and get your Core Web Vitals in the green,
Contact Paul Delcloy.
Florian Darroman - Les Makers
Co-founder
Datadog APM, the backend angle of web performance
When Core Web Vitals stall despite frontend optimizations, the cause is almost always server-side. A TTFB above 600ms won't be fixed with image compression or a JavaScript rewrite — it's fixed by tracking down the slow query, the blocking third-party call, or the silent exception that quietly extends server response time.
Datadog APM offers the most directly actionable granularity for that diagnosis, on par with Dynatrace for most modern stacks. Where Lighthouse, PageSpeed or WebPageTest only see what the browser experiences after the first byte, Datadog sees everything before: application execution, SQL queries, outbound HTTP calls, cache access, synchronous jobs, swallowed exceptions.
Core Web Vitals-driven trace reading
When a mission kicks off, I don't bring in a generic optimization checklist. I open Datadog, segment by critical endpoint (those serving LCP-strategic pages), surface P95s and P99s that drift, and trace back the precise cause through flame graphs and distributed tracing.
This approach changes intervention efficiency. We act on what actually hurts, not what we suspect hurts. On some stacks, backend hotspots invisible for months surface within a few hours of Datadog reading: an N+1 on the product page, a synchronous scoring call that should have been async, a retry pattern multiplying hits by five under load.
Measure every optimization, reject hypothetical wins
Datadog's second strength in a web performance optimization mission is continuous measurement. Every backend optimization shipped gets validated on real traces before publication. The Datadog baseline turns every release into auditable territory — which is what makes web performance a discipline rather than a one-shot intervention.
That's what separates a web performance consultant who leverages Datadog from a Datadog consultant: the tool isn't the subject, it's a lever for cutting TTFB and stabilizing Core Web Vitals. To understand why partnering with a web performance expert still pays off when Datadog is already in place, the business angle matters as much as the tool.
Other expertise Tools
Akamai mPulse
Akamai mPulse leveraged as a Core Web Vitals steering tool: Real User Monitoring on real traffic, segmented by template, device and geography.
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Dynatrace
Dynatrace leveraged to map backend dependencies and target the optimizations that reduce TTFB and improve Core Web Vitals.
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SpeedCurve
SpeedCurve leveraged to track Core Web Vitals continuously, set performance budgets and discipline frontend performance at every release.
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