Platform Engineering
Internal developer platforms, build systems, CI/CD reckonings. The unsexy plumbing that decides how fast a 200-person engineering org can actually ship.
An independent software consultancy
Engineering counsel
for serious
systems.
We embed with engineering teams that need to ship things they can't quite ship alone. Architecture, platform, modernisation — scoped tight, accountable to outcomes.
About — 01 / 04
We embed with engineering teams that need to ship things they can't quite ship alone.
Mana / Vasa is a small senior practice — no juniors, no offshoring, no growth targets. We partner directly with CTOs and VPs of Engineering at organisations where the next quarter's roadmap depends on architectural decisions made this one.
Past lives shipping infrastructure at scale across finance, geospatial, and platform companies. Current life embedded with eight to twelve clients a year, three to nine months at a time.
Practice — how we engage
Architecture & Modernisation
Greenfield architecture for new bets; surgical extraction for monolith carve-outs. Decisions you live with for a decade, made with the next decade in mind.
Engineering Due Diligence
Code, team, and roadmap reviews for investors and acquirers. Three-week engagements, single-document deliverable, defensible under scrutiny.
AI & Data Infrastructure
Production AI systems, vector pipelines, evaluation harnesses. Not the slide-deck kind — the kind that holds up after sixty days in front of real users.
Engagement — 02 / 04
Three shapes of working together.
- Audit 2 weeks · fixed scope
A written and presented review of one well-defined surface area — your platform, your architecture, your team's velocity, or all three. Single-document deliverable, defensible to a board.
from €14k Request the audit brief → - Sprint 4 weeks · embedded
A focused intervention with code that ships. Best when you know the destination but need senior bandwidth to get there cleanly. I work alongside one or two of your engineers, not around them.
from €28k Discuss a sprint → - Embed 3 — 6 months · retained
Acting CTO, principal engineer, or technical advisor — depending on what the org needs that quarter. Three-month minimum, two clients at a time, never more.
from €18k / month Open a conversation →
Words — from past engagements
What clients say when the work is done.
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The week he spent with our platform team paid for itself before the report landed. We rewrote the next quarter's roadmap that Friday.
Maja L. VP Engineering · fintech, Austin
2025 -
Most consultants come in with a deck and leave with a deck. He came in, wrote code with us, and left us a system we could keep building on.
Daniel R. CTO · sensor-network startup, Berlin
2025 -
The clearest technical writing I've received from anyone outside the company. Our investors quoted his audit back to us six months later.
Hannah K. Founder · analytics platform, London
2024
Notes — 03 / 04 · writing & talks
Things I've been thinking about.
- On the cost of premature platform. 6 min read
- Three audits that changed how I work. 8 min read
- Microservices were never your problem. 5 min read
- The shape of a good engineering org chart. 11 min read
- A defence of boring tools — Postgres, cron, and writing things down. 7 min read
Contact — 04 / 04 · accepting engagements Q3 / Q4