Cloud
Where the Constraints Actually Live
An app is the part of a product people can see. The reason a product is hard to change is almost always somewhere else: a data model that made sense for the first version, an integration with a system nobody controls, a schema that three teams now depend on.
That is the work on this page. The services behind the interface, the shape of the data, the seams where a product meets systems it did not build, and the infrastructure it all runs on.
What This Covers
Backend, Data, and Infrastructure
Three things that are usually one job.
Services and APIs
The application behind the app. Business logic, authentication, the endpoints your own clients call, and the contracts they depend on.
Data Models
How the information is shaped, and what that shape makes easy or impossible later. This is the decision that is most expensive to revisit.
Integrations
The seams where your product meets a system somebody else owns. Their format, their schedule, their idea of an interface.
Backends We've Built
Each of these is on a case study you can read
Mitsubishi Comfort
We rebuilt the web backend and re-architected the web platform, rebuilt the communication layer between the platform and its IoT device fleet, and migrated that fleet to AWS IoT Core. Engagement began November 2023 and is ongoing.
Project Foodie
A Django content system that treats a recipe as an event timeline rather than a document, so the editorial team could build an episode without an engineer in the loop.
TuneRegistry
The rights-registration workflows, the data model holding them together, and per-exchange integrations that deliver clean data to every partner in the format each one requires.
RealKey
A Django backend for a B2B mortgage platform, with the custom document tooling that came out of demoing it at an industry conference.
Phyn by Belkin
The MVP backend for a smart water monitor: the service the device talks to, the path sensor data travels, and where the machine-learning models plug in.
Shape It Once
The data model is the decision you cannot take back cheaply.
Most of what looks like a feature problem later is a modelling problem now. Foodie is the clearest example we have: treating a recipe as an event timeline rather than a document is what let editors build an episode without an engineer, and that was a schema decision, not a UI one.
We would rather spend a week on the model than a quarter working around it.
Know Who Owes You What
Integrations break on somebody else's schedule.
An integration against a system you pay for is built once: you are a customer, and they have a commercial reason not to break you. An integration against a system nobody owes you anything is a subscription to an arms race.
We check that before we build, not after. If a feed can simply be licensed, a supported feed you can rely on beats anything either of us would maintain.
How a Backend Engagement Starts
Read What's There
The schema, the services, the integrations, and the deploy path. What the system does today, and which parts of it everything else depends on.
Name the Constraint
There is usually one thing making everything slow. A model, a coupling, a manual step in the middle. We say which, in writing, before proposing work.
Change It in Slices
Rebuilds that go dark for a quarter are how this work fails. Each slice ships and is used, and the old path stays until the new one has earned its place.
Hand It Over as We Go
Documentation and architecture notes written while the work happens, not collected at the end. Whoever carries it next should not need us.
Our Stack
What We Build On
Chosen for teams who will maintain this after us.
Is This Right for You?
We're a good fit if: You have a system that works and is getting harder to change. You are integrating with something you do not control. You need someone who will read the code before recommending a rewrite.
We're not a good fit if: You want a rewrite quoted before anyone has read what is there. You need a dedicated infrastructure engineer on staff rather than a team.
More From Our Portfolio
Tell Us What's Getting Harder
If a system is slowing your team down, describe it and we'll tell you what we think is actually going on.