Four areas. Most engagements touch more than one.
We are deliberately broad about what we take on and deliberately narrow about how we do it. Someone from Hasten Labs is always in the codebase — we do not staff a project and supervise from a distance.
Product and platform engineering
Building the thing, properly.
Most of our work is here. Services and APIs, internal tools, the infrastructure underneath, and the integration into whatever already exists. We work in the languages your team already uses rather than importing a stack you will have to learn.
- Backend services and API design
- Internal tools and operational interfaces
- Infrastructure, deployment and environment setup
- Integration with existing systems, including the old ones
Data and integration
Getting information where it needs to be.
Information that is stuck in a format, a system or a filing cabinet, moved into somewhere it can be used. This ranges from straightforward pipeline work to extracting structure out of documents nobody designed to be machine-readable.
- Pipelines between systems that were never meant to connect
- Document and unstructured-content processing
- Reporting and reconciliation workflows
- Migration off systems that have outlived their support
Quality and assurance
Proving it works, repeatedly.
The work that decides whether a release ships or sits in review for six weeks. Coverage, automation, and the written evidence that satisfies whoever has to approve it. In regulated businesses this is usually the constraint, not the engineering.
- Test strategy and automation from the requirements up
- Traceability from requirement to test to result
- Regression suites that survive changes to the system
- Reports written for the people who sign off, not just developers
Technical advisory
A second opinion with its hands in the code.
Short, focused engagements where the question is what to do rather than how to do it. We read the code, talk to the team, and write down what we actually think — including when the answer is that the project should not proceed.
- Architecture and codebase review
- Build, buy or leave alone assessments
- Vendor and technology evaluation
- Due diligence on systems you are about to depend on
On newer technology
We use it where it earns its place.
A fair amount of our recent work involves machine learning and language models, particularly in document processing and assurance. We are comfortable there and happy to go deep on it.
We are equally comfortable telling you a problem does not need it. Choosing the newest available tool is not a strategy, and in regulated environments it is frequently the thing that stops a project getting approved.
How engagements are shaped
Assessment
Two to three weeks
We look at what you have, what you are trying to do, and whether the two connect. You get a written assessment with a recommendation — sometimes the recommendation not to build it.
Build
Six weeks and up
A defined system, delivered working, with tests and documentation. Scoped tightly enough that you know what you are getting before it starts.
Embedded
Ongoing
We work alongside your team on a retained basis — reviewing architecture, unblocking delivery, and building the pieces that need outside hands.
Most relationships start with an assessment, because it is the cheapest way for both sides to find out whether the fit is real.