Approach · How we work
Two calls, then a written brief.
Then we decide together.
Our intake is sixty minutes long, and you leave it with a deliverable whether or not you hire us. After that, the way we compose a team and run an engagement is unusual enough to be worth a page of its own.
Intake
The First Hour, in detail.
We hold two short calls and write you a one-pager within seventy-two hours. That's the entire intake. No NDAs to sign before the call. No discovery decks. No sales engineer who hands off later.
QDW intake
Two calls. A written read. No commitment.
Bring the technical lead. We'll bring ours.
00 : 00
Scoping call
Thirty minutes. What you're trying to build, what's in the way, who's already on it. No slides. We'd rather you talk and we listen. Aim is to leave understanding the problem well enough to ask hard questions next time.
00 : 30
Technical call
Thirty minutes with the engineer who would actually lead the work. Architecture, constraints, the parts you wouldn't put in an RFP. Usually within 5–10 working days of the first call.
00 : 60
Written read
A one-page brief, delivered within 72 hours of call two: how we'd frame the problem, the risks we'd flag, the shape of a team, an honest range on the months it'd take. Yours to keep whatever happens next.
Whether you hire us is a separate question. Not every First Hour leads to an engagement — we'll tell you when we're not the right shop.
Team composition
Assembled, not benched.
We don't keep a hundred people on the bench waiting for projects. Every engagement gets a team built for it, drawn from people we've worked with before. It's slower to sell and considerably better at delivering.
After the First Hour we write the team composition into the proposal (names, roles, time allocation, and where each person has done this before). You see the team before you sign anything. You'll talk to them in week one, not in month two.
We don't outsource and we don't sub-contract beyond the named team. If a project needs a skill no one on the proposed team has, we'll say so. Then we'll either bring in a specific named specialist we've worked with, or recommend someone else entirely.
When the project's done the team disbands. We don't have a sales motion that needs everyone busy at all times. That's the whole point.
Engagement lifecycle
Five phases. None of them are a "discovery sprint".
Phase 01
First Hour
Two calls, one written brief.
Phase 02
Proposal
Named team, scope, milestones, price. ≤ 2 pages.
Phase 03
Kickoff
Week one. Access, environments, the first decisions.
Phase 04
Delivery
Weekly demos, monthly written updates, no status theatre.
Phase 05
Handover
Pair-and-fade with your team. We leave when you don't need us.
Proposals are short on purpose. If we can't write the scope in two pages we don't understand it yet. Pricing is fixed-fee or capped time-and-materials, never open-ended. Statements of work are reviewed monthly against the brief from the First Hour; if the problem changed, we re-baseline rather than quietly extend.
Not just code
What we ship that isn't software.
- Written briefs. Every project starts and ends with one. Two pages each, plain English, kept on file.
- Runbooks. Every system we hand over comes with a runbook your on-call can read at 3 a.m.
- On-call training. We pair with your team through the first month of production incidents.
- Hiring help. When the project needs your team to grow, we'll write the JD, design the interview, and join the panel.
- An honest end date. We tell you in writing when we think we should leave, and we leave.
Principles
Six things we believe about this work.
01
Seniority is not optional.
We don't put juniors on client work. The reason engagements compress to months instead of years is the average years on the team.
02
Write before you build.
Every system we ship begins as a written brief. If we can't explain the architecture in two pages, we don't understand it yet.
03
The smaller cut.
For most problems there's a 20%-of-the-work version that gets you 80% of the value. We look for it before we propose anything else.
04
No big-bang rewrites.
We've never seen one work on schedule. We strangle, refactor, replace one service at a time. If you genuinely need a rewrite, we'll say so, and not be the shop that does it.
05
Own it through ninety days.
We don't ship and leave. We carry the pager with your team through the first quarter of production load.
06
Tell you when we're wrong.
If we miss an estimate, mis-scope a milestone, or pick the wrong approach, you'll hear it in the next weekly demo. Surprise is worse than bad news.
A note on NDAs
We work under NDA. Everything you'll see here reflects that.
Our clients are hedge funds, banks, and platforms whose systems are competitive assets. We don't put their names on this site. We don't reuse their code. We don't publish architecture diagrams. The engagements on Work are anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Internally we run with separate environments per client and ISO 27001-aligned access controls. Cert is in audit; expected January 2027.
By the numbers
Composition as proof.
12 yrs
Average experience across the active bench
60/40
Split of US to EU client work, last twelve months
100%
Lead engineers. No juniors, no offshoring
ISO 27001
In audit. Certification expected January 2027