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Database engineering

Databases that stand up under real load

Custom database systems designed for scale, integrity, and performance, senior engineers who get the architecture right, run migrations without data loss, and keep production quick under real load.

~2wks
to project kickoff
100%
code & IP ownership
Petabyte
scale systems shipped
6–10yrs
average engineering experience

We start with your problem, not the engine, the slow queries, the schema that fights you, the data you can't trust, and tell you honestly what it takes to fix it.

Database development services

From architecture and schema design through migration and production tuning. Pick a service to see how we approach it.

Off-the-shelf databases force rigid schemas and workflows that rarely fit complex business logic or data relationships. We build custom databases that adapt to your requirements, supporting unique models and integrations without giving up functionality.

How we help

Our engineers design schemas around your real data model and encode business rules at the database layer through stored procedures, tuning access patterns to your query workload from the outset. That foundation gives your engineering team a database they can build against with confidence.

Early architecture choices decide whether a database scales cleanly or becomes a bottleneck as volumes grow. Most teams underestimate how tightly those first decisions constrain everything built later.

How we help

We match architecture to the dominant workload, schema, storage engine, partitioning. Set the indexing strategy and replication topology before implementation begins. Locking those decisions early prevents the schema rewrites and indexing overhauls that stall teams down the line.

Legacy platforms reach a point where the cost of staying outweighs the risk of moving. Aging infrastructure limits what teams can build and carries security exposure modern systems don’t.

How we help

We scope and run migrations with data integrity as the primary constraint, defining rollback procedures and cutover criteria before execution starts. Afterward, your team ships on modern infrastructure without carrying the old platform’s limits forward.

On-prem databases tie engineering capacity to infrastructure chores that don’t move products forward. Provisioning and patching cycles quietly consume time that compounds across quarters.

How we help

Our engineers work across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, from first configuration to production readiness, with high availability and automated failover built into every deployment, greenfield or brownfield. Your team wins back the hours infrastructure management was swallowing.

Apps serving users across regions can’t rely on a single instance without adding latency or availability risk. Geographic distribution forces consistency trade-offs that shift by workload and resist a single default.

How we help

We architect distributed systems with consistency models matched to the use case, bringing hard-won experience with those trade-offs to your design, so your engineers get a distributed database that serves every region without sacrificing correctness where it counts.

Analytical queries against a transactional database create contention and rarely hit performance targets at scale. The two workloads call for different storage design, access patterns, and optimization.

How we help

We build warehouses on Snowflake, Redshift, or BigQuery with dimensional models that mirror how your business reports, plus ETL pipelines pulling from operational sources on schedules that match how teams consume reporting, a platform you can query hard without touching production performance.

Query degradation is easy to miss early and hard to unwind once data grows and usage patterns settle. By the time users feel it, the root causes are usually buried deep in schema and indexing choices.

How we help

Our engineers diagnose and resolve performance issues across the entire database stack, not just at the query level, validating every change under realistic load before it reaches production, so gains hold without a full re-architecture.

Production databases need active oversight. Without it, replication lag widens, index fragmentation builds up, and storage grows unchecked until a small issue becomes an outage.

How we help

We set up monitoring and alerting that catches degradation early, before a minor problem snowballs into downtime, and shift that operational load off your engineering team entirely.

Data platforms we've shipped

View all case studies

The stack we build with

We cover the full range of production RDBMS platforms, schema design, query optimisation, replication, and long-term performance management where consistency and integrity matter most.

PostgreSQL
MySQL
SQL Server
Oracle

We architect and run NoSQL deployments where schema flexibility and horizontal scale are the core requirements, with production experience across document, wide-column, and key-value stores.

MongoDB
Cassandra
DynamoDB
Redis

We bring deep production experience with graph databases for workloads where relationship traversal is the dominant query pattern, whether you've already picked a platform or need guidance.

Neo4j
Neptune
ArangoDB
TigerGraph

We implement time-series solutions for IoT, monitoring, and financial data where ingestion velocity and retention drive the architecture, handling compression, downsampling, and storage.

InfluxDB
TimescaleDB
Prometheus
Timestream

We deploy and configure managed database services across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud for production, with high availability, automated failover, and disaster recovery in every build.

Amazon RDS
Azure SQL
Cloud SQL
Spanner

We design and maintain analytical environments for organisations running heavy reporting that can't share infrastructure with operational systems, modelling, ETL, and query performance at scale.

Snowflake
Redshift
BigQuery
Azure Synapse

We run schema conversion, data transfer, and validation across platform migrations where downtime and data loss aren't acceptable, defining cutover and rollback before any migration begins.

AWS DMS
GoldenGate
Flyway
Liquibase

We configure encryption, access controls, and audit logging at the platform level to meet regulatory requirements, defining the controls during architecture and enforcing them throughout delivery.

TDE
Row-Level Security
Vault
Secrets Manager

Our database development process

Eleven steps, run in order, step through the sequence from requirements and modeling to monitoring and handover.

01

Requirements & data modeling

We work with stakeholders to understand data requirements, transaction volumes, query patterns, and compliance needs, turning business objectives into the database specs that steer design.

02

Architecture & tech pick

Our architects weigh platforms against workload characteristics, consistency requirements, and scaling needs, designing systems that balance performance against cost.

03

Schema design

We design schemas with normalisation for integrity, set relationships and constraints, and optimise for query patterns to head off anomalies and keep operations efficient.

04

Capacity planning

We analyse projected data volumes, estimate storage, size compute needs, and plan for growth, heading off performance degradation as usage scales.

05

Migration planning

We audit source systems, map data structures, flag compatibility issues, and define rollback procedures to keep downtime low and protect data integrity through the transition.

06

Environment setup

We configure development, staging, and production environments with version control for schema changes, automated testing, and deployment pipelines validated before production.

07

Build & data loading

Our engineers build the database structures, implement stored procedures and triggers, configure replication, and load the initial data with validation checks confirming correctness.

08

Performance tuning

We analyse execution plans, add indexes, optimise table structures, and tune database parameters, testing under realistic load to prove response times.

09

Security hardening

We implement encryption, enforce role-based permissions, apply security patches, and configure audit logging to protect sensitive data and hold regulatory compliance.

10

Migration & validation

We run migrations with automated scripts, validate data completeness, run compatibility testing, and watch performance, with a staged cutover that allows quick rollback if needed.

11

Monitoring & handover

We set up monitoring and proactive alerts for performance and errors, then write runbooks, document the schema, and train admins so teams can run and evolve the system.

Database experts, AI-augmented

These are the AI coding tools our engineers use to ship faster and keep code clean, distinct from the AI systems we design and build for you.

Claude CodeGitHub CopilotCodexCursorReplitGeminiOllamaWindsurf

We use these tools inside strict guardrails, every line is reviewed by a person. See how we build →

1

Senior Database engineers

Engineers with real, hands-on database experience who take ownership of the work, not juniors learning on your budget.

2

Production-grade delivery

We take work from prototype to production, with testing, monitoring, and clean handover, not demos that stall after the pitch.

3

Security & compliance

Safeguards from day one. We build to and align with the standards regulated industries expect, including HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.

We've delivered database engineering across healthcare, fintech, proptech, logistics, and more.

See how we approach your industry
Engagement

How you'd work with us on Database

Pick the level of ownership that suits you. We shape the engagement around your goals.

1

Staff augmentation

Add senior Database engineers to a team you already have.

2

Dedicated team

A committed Database team that runs like your own.

3

Full delivery

Hand over the build and we deliver it end to end.

Explore engagement models

Database FAQ

Database creaking under load?

Bring us the slow queries, the risky migration, the schema you’ve outgrown. We’ll tell you honestly what it takes to fix it.

Book a discovery call