Software architecture & technical strategy
Decide well once, instead of paying for it every sprint.
- Engagement
- Fixed-price assessment or fractional retainer
- Typical timeline
- 2–5 weeks for an assessment
- Starts at
- $12,000
Fractional architecture retainers are available if you want senior technical judgement on tap without hiring a full-time architect.
Book a callYou're probably reading this because
If two or more of these describe your situation, a 30-minute call will be worth your time.
- The system worked at 100 users and is failing at 10,000.
- Every new feature takes longer than the last one, and nobody can explain why.
- You're about to acquire a company and need to know what its codebase is really worth.
- Your cloud bill grows faster than your revenue.
- Two of your senior engineers disagree about a rewrite and you have to arbitrate.
- You need a technical plan credible enough to put in front of investors.
Concretely, what we deliver
Written as deliverables rather than activities, so you can tell whether you received them.
- 01
Architecture assessment
A written review of your current system: where it will break, what it costs to run, which parts are load-bearing, and which risks are genuinely urgent versus merely untidy.
- 02
Target architecture and migration path
Where you should get to, and the incremental sequence to get there without a stop-the-world rewrite. Each step ships independently and leaves the system working.
- 03
Technology selection with the reasoning shown
Recommendations weighed against your team's actual skills, hiring market, budget and time horizon, not against what's fashionable. You get the trade-offs, including the case against our own recommendation.
- 04
Technical due diligence
For acquisitions and investments: code quality, security posture, key-person risk, licensing exposure, infrastructure cost, and a defensible estimate of what it takes to bring the system up to standard.
- 05
Cost and performance review
Where your cloud spend is going, which queries are burning it, and what changes pay back fastest. Usually the largest wins are a handful of unindexed queries and over-provisioned instances.
- 06
Decision records your team keeps
Each significant choice documented with its context and alternatives, so in two years nobody has to reverse-engineer why the system is shaped this way.
Our approach, and why
The reasoning matters more than the method. If you disagree with the reasoning, we should talk before you hire anyone.
We recommend what we'd be willing to maintain
We build and run software, which disciplines our advice. It's easy to recommend an elaborate architecture when someone else operates it at 3am. Every recommendation is one we would be prepared to be on call for.
The smallest architecture that survives your horizon
Most systems are over-engineered for scale they'll never reach and under-engineered for the failure that actually takes them down. We design for your real trajectory, which usually means fewer moving parts than you were expecting.
Rewrites are the last option
Full rewrites overrun, and the replacement inherits the same misunderstandings. We look hard for incremental paths first, and if a rewrite genuinely is correct, we'll show you the arithmetic rather than assert it.
Independent when it needs to be
Assessments and due diligence can be bought as standalone work with no expectation of an implementation contract. That independence is the point: advice from someone angling for the build is worth less.
Technologies we use for this
- AWS
- Azure
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- Redis
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- Event-driven design
- Domain-driven design
- Observability
- Load testing
Selected per project against your team's existing skills and hiring market, not against what's fashionable. If your system runs on something not listed, ask.
What changes for you
- A technical plan your team, board or acquirer can actually act on.
- Infrastructure spend brought back in line with what you're getting.
- Delivery speed recovered by removing what was slowing it down.
- Expensive architectural mistakes caught while they're still cheap.
What people ask about software architecture
Regularly. The most valuable outcome of an assessment is sometimes that your current system is fine and the real problem is process, or that the feature you're planning won't move the metric you care about.
No, and the deliverable is written so another vendor or your in-house team can execute it. If a recommendation only works when we're the ones building it, that's a bad recommendation.
Under deal pressure we can produce a focused assessment in five to seven business days given repository and infrastructure access. A thorough review is closer to three weeks.
Often combined with
Custom Software Development
Applications built for how your business actually works: the workflows no off-the-shelf product will ever match.
Support & Modernization
We take over existing systems (including ones whose original developers are long gone), stabilize them, and modernize them incrementally.
Dedicated Teams
Vetted nearshore engineers who join your standups, your repo, and your roadmap, and who stay long enough to build real context.
Let's talk about your software architecture project
Thirty minutes with an engineer who can scope it. You'll leave with a view on approach, a budget range, and an honest answer about whether we're the right firm, including when we aren't.