About
Small enough to reach. Structured enough to trust.
You talk directly to the engineers doing the work. You also get written scope, reviewed code, tested releases, and reporting on a fixed cadence — the same delivery discipline you would expect from a firm ten times our size, without the layers in between.
How we think
Three things we believe about building software.
Most problems are decisions, not code
Software goes wrong at the choices made early, under time pressure, with incomplete information — then built on for two years. Good engineering is mostly making those carefully and leaving a trail of why.
Senior-weighted is cheaper
Fewer engineers who need less direction ship more than a larger team that needs managing, and the code they leave behind costs less to maintain. The day rate is higher; the total is lower.
Process is what makes small work
A small team without discipline is a risk, and buyers are right to treat it as one. Written scope, reviewed code, tested releases, and fixed reporting are what let you get direct access without giving up assurance.
Delivery standards
How every engagement is run.
These are not aspirations. They apply to every project regardless of size, and you are welcome to audit any of them during an engagement.
Written scope before work starts
Every engagement begins with a signed statement of work: deliverables, acceptance criteria, assumptions, and what is explicitly out of scope. Changes are re-estimated and approved in writing, never absorbed silently.
Version control and code review on everything
All work lands via pull request with review by a second engineer. No direct commits to main, no unreviewed production changes, and a full history you can audit at any point.
Automated testing and CI
Test suites run on every change before merge. Coverage expectations are agreed per project rather than claimed as a universal number, and the pipeline blocks a merge that breaks them.
Environments and release control
Separate development, staging, and production environments with promotion between them. Releases are versioned, logged, and reversible, with rollback tested rather than assumed.
Documentation as a deliverable
Architecture decision records, runbooks, and environment setup written during the work and delivered with it — not reconstructed at handover. Another team should be able to take over without us.
Regular reporting on a fixed cadence
A written status report each cycle covering what shipped, what slipped, what it cost, and what changed in the risks. Delivered on a schedule you can set your own reporting by.
Security & data handling
How we handle access, code, and your data.
The controls that apply from day one, before any certification conversation.
Least-privilege access
Engineers get the minimum access needed for their task, granted for the duration of the engagement and revoked on exit. Access changes are logged and reviewable.
No production data in development
Development and test environments use synthetic or anonymised data by default. Where production data is unavoidable, it is agreed in writing with the handling constraints attached.
Secrets management
Credentials live in a managed secret store, never in repositories, tickets, or chat. We run automated secret scanning on every commit.
Dependency and vulnerability monitoring
Automated CVE tracking on all dependencies with an agreed severity-based patching window, so upgrades happen on a schedule rather than in a panic.
Confidentiality and IP
Mutual NDA before technical discussion. All work product and IP is assigned to you, and your code stays in your repositories under your organisation's account throughout.
Incident process
Defined severity levels, response times, and escalation paths agreed per engagement, with a written post-incident review for anything significant.
Boundaries
What we won't do.
Every one of these is something the industry does routinely. Saying so up front saves both of us a discovery call.
Quote a fixed price for unscoped work
A number given before anyone has scoped the work is a guess dressed as a commitment.
Take work outside what we do well
However good the budget is. We'll say so on the first call and point you somewhere better.
Bill juniors as seniors
You get the people we said you'd get, at the rate we said they'd cost.
Hold your code or infrastructure hostage
Your repository, your cloud accounts, your credentials — from day one, not at handover.