Every engagement starts here. Before we write a line of code or provision a single resource, we build a complete picture of what you're building and how it should fit together.
The design phase produces a concrete, implementation-ready architecture — the kind of artifact that compresses months of exploratory decision-making into a focused sprint. Whether your team executes the build, we do, or some combination of both, the design ensures everyone is working from the same foundation.
The design is infrastructure-agnostic — deployable on AWS, GCP, Azure, bare metal, or any combination.
You reach out describing what you want to build. A paragraph is fine. We don't need a requirements document.
We assess fit internally. Not every project benefits from this approach — if yours doesn't, we'll say so directly and explain why.
Before we talk, we send you a prep worksheet covering your system's context, scale expectations, technical environment, and priorities. This gets the broad strokes on paper so our call can focus on the decisions that matter.
The discovery call itself runs 30–90 minutes. For complex systems, we may schedule a follow-up. Discovery is done when we have enough shared understanding to make sound architectural decisions, not when a calendar slot runs out.
This is where experience earns its keep. We translate your requirements into a concrete architecture — choosing the right components, defining the boundaries between them, sequencing the implementation path, and documenting the reasoning behind each decision.
We walk through the complete design together. Every architectural decision gets explained. Every tradeoff gets named. You leave with full understanding of what to build and why.
You receive the complete package: rendered PDFs for easy reading, source markdown and diagrams for your team to reference and maintain as the system evolves.
The design phase stands on its own — some teams take the deliverables and run. But it's also the natural starting point for a longer engagement. The design gives both sides enough shared context to scope follow-on work accurately.
We build the system — embedded with your team or working independently. Billed hourly, reported weekly, with an estimated range agreed upfront. This is the right path when your team needs depth in a specific domain and wants someone who can build and make sound technical decisions without close supervision.
Your team builds; we stay available for architecture questions, design reviews, and course corrections. Structured as a monthly retainer (typically 10–20 hours/month) for the duration of the build. Good for capable teams that want a safety net from someone who knows the design inside out.
We stand up the platform specified in the design: cloud resources, networking, deployment pipelines, monitoring. Fixed price, scoped from the design deliverable. You get running infrastructure, infrastructure-as-code, and a handoff session covering day-2 operations.
Ongoing architectural consultation for systems that continue to evolve. Monthly fee, 30-day cancellation. We maintain familiarity with the system and provide guidance as requirements change, new features are planned, or scaling challenges emerge.
Every follow-on engagement has a defined billing structure before work begins. Scope is a boundary — when work approaches the edge of what was agreed, we flag it before crossing, not after.
We front-load the hard thinking. Discovery isn't a checkbox — it's where we build the understanding that the entire design rests on. The prep worksheet gets the basics on paper; the call (or calls) is where we dig into the decisions that actually shape the architecture. We don't move to design until both sides are confident we're solving the right problem.
The design phase draws on years of building and operating production infrastructure at scale. The handoff call ensures nothing gets lost in translation — you should be able to explain every architectural decision in the document, not just read them.
This process works because the investment is concentrated where it matters most: getting the architecture right before committing resources to building it. A sound design absorbs requirement changes gracefully. A poor one turns every change into a rearchitecture.
If your requirements shift fundamentally after delivery — different scale targets, different compliance environment, different product entirely — that's a new design conversation. But a well-scoped design handles the normal evolution of a project without starting over.