Architecture decisions that compound.
How your services talk to each other. Where state lives. What runs synchronously, what runs in the background. How you'll add the next ten features without rewriting the last ten. Written down, defensible, your team's.
The problem we solve
Most architectural decisions are made in the heat of a sprint by whoever was closest to the keyboard. A year later, no one remembers why, every change touches three services, and adding a feature takes three weeks longer than it should. We do this work the way it deserves — on paper, with trade-offs explicit, with a decision log your team can defend in six months.
What we deliver
- 01Architecture review of an existing system with prioritized findings
- 02Greenfield architecture design with ADRs for every meaningful choice
- 03Service decomposition — monolith, modular monolith, microservices, when each fits
- 04Data architecture: schema, ownership, consistency, replication, denormalization
- 05Integration architecture: APIs, webhooks, events, queues, message bus
- 06Caching strategy across browser, edge, application and database layers
- 07Background work, scheduling and workflow architecture
- 08Multi-region, multi-tenant and disaster-recovery patterns
- 09Cost-aware architecture — performance and cost as joint constraints
- 10Migration architecture for moving from one shape to another safely
What you receive
- Written architecture document with diagrams and ADRs
- Decision log explaining why each choice was made
- Implementation roadmap your team can execute
- A presentation to your engineering team and stakeholders
Patterns we work in
Ideal for
- → Teams whose product has outgrown its original architecture
- → Founders preparing to scale from one team to several
- → Companies considering a microservices move and wanting an honest second opinion
- → Engineering leaders inheriting a system without a documented design
- → Boards funding a platform engineering investment and wanting it scoped properly
How an engagement runs
- 01
Listen
Working sessions with engineers, product, ops. We learn the business constraints and the actual pain — not what the deck says.
- 02
Map current state
Service map, data flows, integration surface, ownership. Often the first time it's been written down.
- 03
Design target state
Architecture for where you want to be in 18 months. Trade-offs explicit. Decisions justified.
- 04
Migration plan
How to get from current to target without stopping product delivery. Phased, de-risked, written down.
- 05
Deliver & defend
Presentation to your team and stakeholders. Q&A, revisions, ownership transfer.
How to engage
Architecture Sprint
Diagnosis and target architecture for a defined scope. Document, ADRs, roadmap.
Greenfield Design
Architecture for a system being built from scratch, often before any code is written.
Architecture Advisory
Retained architectural review for big decisions on a monthly cadence — see also Fractional CTO.
Frequently asked.
01Do you actually write code or just deliver documents?
Both. The document is the deliverable, but we routinely pair with engineers to implement the riskiest part of the architecture as a proof — because no architecture survives first contact unchanged.
02Will you tell us to do microservices?
Probably not. The honest answer for most teams under 50 engineers is a well-designed modular monolith. We will tell you the truth even when it's unfashionable.
03Do you work with our existing architect?
Yes — frequently as a sparring partner for an internal architect. A second senior opinion on a consequential decision is often the highest-leverage thing we do.
Have a problem worth solving well?
Tell us the outcome you want. We'll tell you what it takes — honestly, within a week, in writing.
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