FHI-Aims is a numeric atomic-orbital based electronic structure code to perform density functional theory calculations and beyond. A proof-of-principle first order response module was previously implemented based on density functional perturbation theory, but in its fractured and redundant form it was unmaintanable and largely unused. We have performed a large-scale refactorisation of this code to provide consistent functionality, to increase scalability and memory efficiency. The new module framework is well documented and easily extendable. This is shown by the implementation of a new driver module for electron- phonon response and by interfacing the module with the distributed matrix library ELSI and the LibXC library. We further provide showcase applications and performance graphs on ARCHER2 for the redesigned functionality.