Platform engineering

SaaS platforms

For software businesses scaling past their first tier. The product is rarely the hard part — it's everything underneath that has to hold as customers arrive.

The shape of the problem

Invisible boundaries

Establish multi-tenancy up front, while it is still a choice.

The platform

Shared code, shared deploy, shared operations team.

Shared
application, background jobs, release pipeline
Separated
data, encryption keys, audit trail
Configurable
limits, branding, feature access

  • Enterprise tenant

    Dedicated schema, custom SSO, own retention policy

  • Growth tenant

    Shared schema, row-level isolation, standard limits

  • Self-serve tenant

    Shared schema, trial state, usage-capped

Isolation boundary enforced in the data layer, not the UI

Row-level isolation is cheaper and faster to ship; schema-per-tenant passes enterprise security reviews more easily. Most platforms end up with both — fine, as long as it was chosen rather than accumulated.

A cut through the platform

Five layers under the interface

Select a layer to see what we build there and what we decide together.

Layer 01

Multi-tenant architecture

Where the isolation boundary sits sets your security posture, your per-customer cost, and how hard your first enterprise deal will be.

What we build

  • Tenant resolution and request scoping
  • Row- or schema-level data isolation
  • Per-tenant configuration, limits and feature access
  • Tenant-aware background jobs and caching

What we decide together

  • Shared schema or schema per tenant — and for which plans
  • What an enterprise customer may demand later
  • How much per-tenant cost you're willing to carry
Billing

The cases that break billing systems

Charging a card is the easy part. These are the cases we work through first.

  1. A customer upgrades mid-cycle

    Prorated for the remaining period, with the invoice line shown before they confirm.

  2. A trial ends with no card on file

    A defined grace state: data kept, writes restricted, and an opening for your sales team.

  3. Seats change three times in a month

    Seats metered, not snapshotted, so invoices match actual use.

  4. The payment fails

    Dunning, retries, an in-app notice, and a clear rule for suspension versus deletion.

  5. They're in a different tax jurisdiction

    A tax provider maintains the rates; evidence is stored against each invoice.

  6. They downgrade and exceed the new limit

    Block, throttle, or bill the overage — agreed up front, never silent.

Public API

Your API is a product with its own customers

Versioned from the first endpoint, documented as it's written, and stable enough to build on without asking you first.

  • GET/v1/workspacespaginated
  • POST/v1/workspaces/:id/membersidempotent
  • GET/v1/subscriptions/:idscoped
  • POST/v1/webhookssigned
  • DEL/v1/api-keys/:idaudited

  • Predictable shapes

    Consistent pagination, filtering and errors, so one integration teaches the rest.

  • Keys, scopes and rate limits

    Per-tenant scoped keys, revocable independently, with limits returned in headers.

  • Webhooks that can be trusted

    Signed payloads, retries with backoff, and a readable delivery log.

  • Documentation from the source

    OpenAPI generated from the code, so the docs can't drift.

Operational reliability

Four things an enterprise buyer will ask about

None of them are features. All of them stall deals when the answer is vague.

Environment separation

Production, staging and preview genuinely separate: data, credentials and access.

Reversible migrations

Schema changes that deploy without downtime and roll back without a recovery call.

Audit trail

Who changed what, in which tenant, and when — queryable, retained and exportable.

Restore, rehearsed

Backups aren't the deliverable. A tested restore with a known recovery time is.

— Start here —

Bring us the part you already know will break

A two-week written architecture review and a plan with an order to it. If we're not the right team for the build, the document says so.

Book a platform review
  • Two-week review
  • Written deliverable
  • Your code stays yours
  • No lock-in