Web platform development in Austin
The permissions model in most Austin enterprise SaaS products started as an admin flag, became a role column after the first mid-market customer, and is now a set of checks scattered across handlers that nobody wants to touch. Then an enterprise buyer asks for custom roles, team-scoped access and a history of who changed what, and the honest answer to "who can see this record" is "probably the right people".
We rebuild authorisation as data: organisations, teams, resources and the permissions between them, checked in one place, in Next.js and TypeScript over Postgres. Row-level security or a single data-access layer makes sure no query can skip the check. Every existing role maps onto the new model, so customers notice nothing on the day it ships except the features that were impossible before. The change history enterprise buyers ask for falls out of the same design, rather than being bolted on after the deal.
The city's centre of gravity is enterprise SaaS and consumer fintech, and both bring the same backend problem early: multi-tenancy that was bolted on after the first enterprise deal, and a permissions model that started as a role column. Then the large customer asks for custom roles and SSO, the board asks for usage-based pricing, and the schema was built for neither. Unpicking that while the product keeps selling is most of what an Austin engagement looks like in the first month. On the fintech side the same pressure lands on the mobile app and the ledger: transfers that must never send twice, and balances that have to match what finance sees.
Austin has also been a hardware and semiconductor town for decades. The fabs and equipment suppliers produce tool telemetry, inspection images and test results in volumes most software companies never see, and the hardware start-ups around them reach the point where a board works on the bench and a pilot customer wants to see its data. Their engineers are process, yield and firmware specialists. The software around the hardware, from the device API and the dashboard to the pipeline that turns readings into something a customer can open, is a defined piece of work that suits an outside team.
Then there is timing. Austin has an unusual density of Series A and B product companies, and they tend to raise, hire aggressively for two quarters, then freeze. A mid-level engineer costs around $145,000 base before equity and benefits, and the platform or infrastructure hire is usually the one that waits longest. We are frequently the answer to "we have the roadmap and the budget, but the req is frozen until next quarter", because an engagement is an invoice rather than a headcount. It starts with a fixed-price two-week piece, and it can grow into an embedded engineer for as long as the roadmap needs one.
We move our working day for Texas. Four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Central time, so stand-up, code review and the design conversation happen live with the engineer who writes the code. The code lives in your repositories from the first commit, and runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go, so whoever you hire next inherits work they can read.
We are the right fit when the roadmap is ready and the req is frozen. A defined piece of work, such as a permissions model, a device backend or a cloud setup brought under control, starts with a fixed-price two-week piece. Senior capacity arrives within days, and agencies can put the work under their own name.
Four ways this arrives.
We replace the role column with a permission model that can express teams, access to individual resources and roles the customer defines, add SAML or OIDC sign-in, and write the audit log their security questionnaire will ask about.
Or very nearly did. We find every query that can cross a tenant boundary, enforce the tenant in one layer rather than in every handler, and add tests that try to read across that boundary on purpose.
We build the admin side properly: search across organisations, an audited view-as-user mode, and screens for access and usage. Support stops asking an engineer to run a query against production every time a customer says something looks wrong.
An early Next.js app with auth stitched into middleware, a custom server, and a release process that lives in someone's head. We move it forward in small steps, with preview environments and a pipeline anyone on the team can ship from.
A Next.js platform scoped per organisation, where an administrator can view the app as any other user and each Tableau report opens only for people granted it.
Read the write-up →Asked by Austin teams.
How do you work with teams in Austin?+
We are in Bengaluru and move our working day for Texas, so four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Central time. Stand-ups, code reviews and design calls happen live in that window. We work in your tools, whether that is Slack, GitHub or Linear, and the person on every call is the engineer who writes the code.
Why do Austin product companies come to you?+
Austin has an unusual density of Series A and B product companies with a strong front-end team and no infrastructure hire yet. That is precisely the seat we fill: the multi-tenant backend, the permissions model, the cloud setup and the deploys that nobody senior owns. It is why more of our US enquiries come from Texas than from the coasts. We build it in your codebase, alongside the team you already have.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Austin?+
A mid-level software engineer in Austin earns around $145,000 base before equity and benefits. Our published rate is $35/hour, or $5,400 a month for an embedded engineer, with a $5,000 minimum. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and work starts within days of the call. The first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement at $2,800, so you judge us on what ships.
Our req is frozen until next quarter. Can you cover the gap?+
Yes. It is a common Austin situation, and a good fit for an engagement, because an invoice is not a headcount. The roadmap keeps moving while the req waits. Start with a fixed-price two-week piece, or embed an engineer at $5,400 a month. Runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go, so when your hire does start, they inherit work they can read and extend.
What is wrong with a role column?+
Nothing, until you have more than one kind of customer. A role says who a user is; most real questions are about what they can do to one specific thing, inside one specific organisation. Encoded as role checks, every new requirement becomes a code change in many places. We model permissions as data, check them in one place, and test them like any other logic.
Should we use an auth provider or build our own?+
Use a provider for identity: passwords, magic links, SSO and multi-factor. It is a solved problem and getting it wrong is expensive. Authorisation, meaning what a signed-in user may do, is specific to your product and usually belongs in your own code and database. We wire the first to the second and keep the line between them clear.
How do you handle multi-tenancy?+
Usually one database with a tenant ID on every row, enforced in one place: Postgres row-level security, or a data-access layer every query has to pass through, rather than each handler remembering. A separate database per tenant is sometimes right, for one very large customer or strict isolation, and we will say if that applies to you.
Where does it get hosted?+
Wherever suits your team. Vercel is the least effort for Next.js and fine for most platforms. If cost or long-running background work make that awkward, we run it in containers on Railway, AWS or your own Kubernetes. The repository, the cloud accounts and the bill are in your name either way.
What do enterprise customers ask for, and can you build it?+
Single sign-on through SAML or OIDC, audit logs, role management, session controls, encryption and data export. We build each of them into the platform and help you answer the technical questions on a customer's checklist accurately, so the security conversation speeds the deal up instead of stalling it.