We're a Ruby on Rails consulting firm with a relentless focus on delivering value and quality

Our company culture motivates us to do great work in a disciplined, sustainable fashion. It leads to reduced stress and high-quality work for our clients.

  • Fit and Adaptable

    We build software that's well-designed to solve the problem at hand. We also have our eye on the future, too, ensuring our systems can be adapted to new challenges and variations.

  • Secure

    In today's climate, software security is of paramount concern. We build with automated security testing, to reduce the risk of poor practices, or out of date components.

  • Maintainable

    Whether it's our team or someone else — at some point, someone will need to maintain the system. We build with pride. Everything we create is well-tested, well-structured, documented, and clear.

  • Transferrable

    Well-engineered projects can be easily given to another team for ongoing development — or to onboard a second team to work on more features. Nothing is 'locked-up' in one teammember's head.
I love that they follow Scrum and XP engineering practices. They are happy to review the backend stuff, like unit tests, with me if I ask. Their work is always rock solid. This translates to trust. I trust them implicitly.
Mitch Lacey, PMP, CST, ACP
Scrum Trainer, Agile Coach and Author

Expertise

Languages and Frameworks

Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, Ruby, JavaScript, Node.js, next.js

Databases

PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL, SQLite, Amazon RDS, SQL Server

Front-end Frameworks

Tailwind, Foundation, React, Sass, Angular, CoffeeScript, jQuery

Testing

RSpec for unit and integration; Cucumber for business logic; Cypress for front end

Security

Software Composition Analysis; Static Application Security Testing

DevOps

Heroku's PaaS; GitLab's CI/CD; Amazon Web Services; Digital Ocean VPS; Netlify

Approach

Plan well: domain modeling
We use domain modeling to represent real-world processes. We create a shared language with non-technical stakeholders to ensure we're building the right solution for their problems.
Build right: software quality and pride
Well built software, made with care and quality, is like a great book. It's a joy to plan, to build, and to read. It's a joy to work with; it's deeply satisfying. It's ready to be adapted to change over time, without dread or anxiety.
Deploy smart: reliable cloud-based servers
We have years of experience working with cloud-based hosting services like Heroku and Amazon AWS. And now, we're experts in microservices, "serverless" hosting, and API-driven systems.
Sleep well: automated testing and monitoring
We use automated test suites, continuous integration, and continuous delivery with RSpec, Cucumber, and GitLab CI/CD. Reporting services warn of us outages and attacks, while analytics help us tune performance.

Culture

Transparent
We have a no-bull approach to our work. We don’t obscure our communication with jargon or fluff.
More than order takers
“I love that you care enough to actually think critically about this instead of just saying 'OK, done.' Thank you!” - a current client.
Disciplined
We take ownership and interest in our work, and see it through to a quality end-product that we have pride in.
Central Time Zone
We're local (in Chicago!), close to your time zone, and understand the challenges outsourced projects face.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. We'll cover you until you get your team together, and then we'll help get them up to speed. We'll do a complete, well-organized, well-annotated handoff when they're ready to take over.

All of our projects start with a diagnostic to sort out the project vision and scope, given your budget and timeline. Consulting engagements on existing projects start around $15,000, and new projects start around $25,000. We work on larger projects in two-week increments, and commit up front with you on what we can accomplish that week, so there are no surprises.

When your project is complete, we transfer all ownership and copyright to you, along with the code repository. We retain intellectual rights over our tools and frameworks, which we use on all our projects.
We love how offshore development improves the economy for all. It's fantastic. And we don't spread 'fear and doubt' about fellow developers.

We position ourselves differently, and are not in direct competition with offshore teams. Offshore development can be effective when an organization has a strong technical onshore them, that can closely direct the work at hand, and the problem is very well defined, technically.

We're often asked to consult on on projects that started with offshore resources that aren't going well. We believe offshore isn't a good place to start when ideas are in still in formation, need exploration and adaptability, and need local context and understanding to build great user experiences.

We are more expensive than offshore developers, because we bring a team of integrated professionals to our project, with decades of experience that spans strategy, UX, development practices, and code adaptability.
We're ready to help right away. We can get started on most projects within two weeks.

Contact us

Need quality, strategy-driven engineering support?

Drop us a note for a zero commitment, no-hassle inquiry. We respect your time: you won’t be added to any automated email anything. Just real, human-to-human contact.

Website
www.neotericdesign.com
Max. 500 characters

Ideas

We’re constantly reading, researching, and now writing on engineering topics.

Software Engineering

How to use Rails and Webpack to develop and serve a Javascript client library

Madeline Cowie

Software Engineering

Run Rails Test Suite with Dockerized Selenium on Gitlab CI

Madeline Cowie

Software Engineering

Deliver Paperclip and Pipeline Assets with Amazon CloudFront

Madeline Cowie