Turn source into one artefact
- docker build --pull
- dependency audit
- image signed & pushed
Gate: one image is promoted everywhere. Nothing is rebuilt per stage.
Platform operations
DevOps & infrastructure
For teams held back by their own deployment process. Shipping should be the least interesting part of your week.
- CommitSeconds
- Build~3 min
- Test~6 min
- Deploy~2 min
- ObserveContinuous
Deploy day
Two versions of the same Thursday afternoon
If the left column sounds familiar, the problem is rarely the code.
How it goes now
- Release steps only one person knows
- Staging that doesn't match production
- An unwritten rule: no deploys on Friday
- Rollback means restoring a backup and losing an hour
- A customer tells you it broke
How it should go
- Merging the pull request is the release
- Every environment built from one definition
- Friday is an ordinary day
- Rollback is the previous image, in under a minute
- An alert fires before the support inbox does
What we automate
Commit to production, with a gate at every stage
Each stage runs unattended, and each one can stop the release on its own.
Prove it before anyone sees it
- unit + integration
- end-to-end on a preview env
- migration dry run
Gate: a red pipeline blocks the merge. Overrides need a recorded reason.
Release to a slice first
- rolling / canary rollout
- health checks per pod
- auto-rollback on error budget
Gate: an error rate above threshold reverts the rollout automatically.
Know within a minute
- metrics, logs, traces correlated
- alert routed to an owner
- dashboard per service
Gate: every alert names a service owner.
Make the second time cheaper
- runbook linked from the alert
- on-call rotation & escalation
- post-incident note within 48h
Gate: an incident closes when the follow-up is ticketed, not when the graph recovers.
Infrastructure as code
- terraform plan / apply
- environments from one definition
- changes reviewed like code
Gate: nothing is configured by hand. If it isn't in the repo, it doesn't exist.
What gets set up
Architecture overview
The structural pieces we put in place, and what each one is for.
Cloud foundation
Accounts, networking, IAM and cost boundaries on AWS, GCP or Azure — a mistake stays inside one blast radius.
CI/CD pipelines
GitHub Actions or GitLab CI: build once, test hard, promote the same artefact everywhere.
Containers & orchestration
Small, reproducible Docker images; managed Kubernetes only where the workload justifies it.
Monitoring & logging
Metrics, logs and traces in one place, with alerts that reach a person.
Secrets & access
Credentials in a managed store, rotated and scoped per environment and role.
Backup & recovery
Automated backups, a documented recovery time, and a restore that's been tested.
Observability
The monitoring standard
A short list of services, each with an owner, a threshold and an alert that fires before a customer notices.
ServiceStatusP95Error rateAlert rule
- api-gatewayHealthy128 ms0.04%5xx > 1% for 2m → page on-call
- checkoutHealthy240 ms0.11%latency p95 > 800ms for 5m → page
- reporting-workerDegraded4.2 s0.9%queue depth > 5k for 10m → notify owner
- authHealthy96 ms0.01%failed logins spike → security channel
- postgres-primaryHealthy11 ms—replica lag > 30s → page on-call
Illustrative panel — your services, thresholds and owners replace theseEvery row has a named owner
Security & compliance
Ready for the security questionnaire
We don't certify you. We make sure the evidence already exists when an auditor or enterprise buyer asks for it.
Least privilege by default
Roles scoped to the job, reviewed regularly, removable in one place.
Patching on a cadence
Dependency and base-image updates raised automatically, merged in a standing window.
Evidence that collects itself
Access logs, change history and approvals kept by the tooling, not reconstructed later.
Encryption, stated plainly
In transit and at rest, with documented key management and logged decryption.
Two weeks. One document.
Every bottleneck named.
We review how you build, deploy, monitor and recover, then hand back a prioritised plan: what to fix first, what to leave, and what it costs.
Book an infrastructure review