Senior engineering judgement, before you commit the budget
Most expensive software decisions are made early, with incomplete information and a vendor in the room. We give you an independent, engineering-led view (of the codebase you are about to buy, the architecture you are about to scale, or the roadmap you are about to fund) from people who build software for a living and have no product to sell you.
- Technical due diligence, architecture and code review
- Build-vs-buy, vendor evaluation and technology roadmaps
- Fractional CTO, team augmentation and process improvement
Who this is for
Leaders who need a technical answer they can trust, from someone with no stake in which way it goes.
Founders and investors
You are acquiring, investing in or launching a software business and need to know what is really in the codebase, the team and the infrastructure before the money moves.
Established businesses modernising
You run on systems that work but are getting harder to change. You need a route from where you are to something maintainable, without stopping the business to get there.
Teams without a senior technical lead
You have developers, or a vendor, but nobody senior and independent to set direction, review the work and tell you when something is going wrong.
Consulting services
Each of these produces a written deliverable you can act on. Some are fixed-scope engagements; others run month to month.
Technical due diligence
A structured assessment of a software business or product ahead of an acquisition, investment or major partnership: code quality, architecture, infrastructure, security posture, technical debt, team and delivery process, licensing and IP. It applies whenever someone is about to pay for software they did not build and needs to know what they are getting and what it will cost to keep.
- Codebase, architecture and infrastructure review
- Security and dependency risk assessment
- Team, process and key-person analysis
- Findings ranked by severity with remediation effort
Architecture and code review
An independent look at an existing system: how it is structured, where it will break under growth or change, and what to fix first. Useful when a product is slowing down, incidents are increasing, or a team is about to make a big structural decision and wants a second opinion before it becomes expensive to reverse.
- Scalability, reliability and maintainability review
- Prioritised technical debt register
- Recommendations sequenced by risk and effort
- Read-out session with your engineers
Security and code audits
Application-level security review of code, configuration and infrastructure (authentication and authorisation, data handling, secrets, dependencies, cloud permissions) with findings mapped to the frameworks you answer to, such as PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA or SOC 2. Appropriate before a launch, after an incident, or when a customer or regulator asks for evidence.
- Manual code review supported by tooling
- Cloud configuration and access review
- Compliance gap mapping
- Retest after remediation
Build-vs-buy and vendor evaluation
A decision framework and a recommendation on whether to build, buy or integrate, including a structured comparison of the vendors or platforms in play. Right when you are weighing a SaaS subscription against custom software, choosing between platforms, or evaluating an outsourcing partner and want someone with no stake in the outcome to run the comparison.
- Requirements weighted by what actually matters
- Total cost of ownership over several years
- Vendor scoring, reference and contract review
- Clear recommendation with the reasoning shown
Technology roadmap and modernisation planning
A sequenced plan from your current systems to where the business needs them to be (legacy replacement, cloud migration, platform consolidation, digital transformation) with phases that each deliver something usable. This applies when leadership knows change is needed but the path is unclear or the last attempt stalled.
- Current-state assessment and target architecture
- Phased plan with dependencies and quick wins
- Budget and staffing implications per phase
- Risks and how each is mitigated
Fractional CTO, team augmentation and process improvement
Senior technical leadership on a part-time basis, or experienced engineers embedded in your team, plus help fixing how work gets done: delivery process, code review, CI/CD, estimation, hiring. For companies that need senior direction now but cannot yet justify or find a full-time CTO, or a team that ships slower than its size suggests.
- Part-time CTO or head of engineering
- Senior engineers embedded in your team
- Delivery process, agile and DevOps improvements
- Hiring support and technical interviews
Also part of the engagement
Areas we advise on
Written deliverables
Every engagement ends in a document your board, investors or next engineering lead can read and act on.
Stakeholder read-outs
Findings presented separately to technical and non-technical audiences, in the level of detail each needs.
Remediation follow-through
Optional retests, check-ins and progress reviews so recommendations do not sit in a drawer.
Regional context
Working knowledge of vendors, hosting, payments and regulatory expectations across the US, UAE and South Asia.
How we approach consulting
Independent by design
We hold no reseller agreements or referral fees with vendors. If the right answer is a product we do not build or a competitor who does it better: that is what the report says.
Advice from people who still build
Every consultant is a working engineer. Recommendations are things we would be willing to implement ourselves, with the trade-offs stated.
Written, ranked, actionable
Findings come with severity, effort and a suggested order. Nobody should need to hire us again to understand what we said.
What the engagement looks like
- 01
Scoping call
We agree what decision the work needs to inform, who will read the output and by when. That fixes the scope and the depth.
- 02
Access and assessment
Repository, cloud and document access under NDA; interviews with the people who know the system; structured review against a checklist tailored to your situation.
- 03
Findings and recommendations
A written report and a read-out. Findings ranked, options weighed, recommendation stated plainly.
- 04
Follow-through
Optional support to implement (with us, your team or a vendor) plus check-ins to confirm the plan is holding.
What you receive at the end
Everything runs in accounts you control from the first commit. Ending an engagement is an access change, not a migration.
- Written assessment or due-diligence report
- Ranked findings with severity and effort
- Target architecture or technology roadmap
- Vendor comparison and recommendation
- Read-out sessions for leadership and engineers
- All working notes and artefacts handed over
We’ve got the answers you seek
Anything not covered here? Ask us through the contact form and we’ll answer within a working day.
Yes. We hold no reseller, referral or partnership arrangements that pay us for recommending a product, and we say so in every report. Where we have a view formed by our own build experience, we like some stacks more than others, we state it as an opinion and show the reasoning so you can weigh it.
Tell us the decision you need to make
An acquisition, a rebuild, a vendor choice, a team that has stalled. We'll come back within 24 hours with how we would approach it, what it would take and whether we are the right people to do it.
Trusted by teams across fintech, e-commerce and SaaS
