Product engineering

What the service covers

ByteInk designs, builds and runs software products. One team carries the work from the first architecture decision to the system running in production.

The work covers:

• A written architecture: components, data model, integrations, hosting, and the reasons behind each choice.
• Web applications built with Next.js, React and TypeScript.
• iOS and Android apps.
• Backend services and APIs, including Go services where a single static binary or low overhead matters.
• Containerized deployments on Docker and Kubernetes, with health checks, error monitoring and backups in place from the first release.
• Source code, infrastructure configuration and documentation in version control.

Who it is for

The service fits a company with a product to build and no engineering team to build it. It also fits a company with a team that needs a second one for a defined part of the system, such as the mobile app or a new backend service.

It fits an existing product that has outgrown its first version, where the architecture has to be rebuilt while the product stays live.

If the idea has not been tested with users yet, start with prototypes and R&D. If the work is adding AI to software that already exists, see AI consulting.

How an engagement runs

Discovery. We read what exists: the brief, any current code, the data and the constraints. The output is a written scope that states what will be built, what is left out, and how the result will be judged.

Architecture. We choose the stack and the shape of the system and write both down. Decisions that are expensive to reverse, such as the data model, authentication and hosting, are settled here.

Build. Work ships in short cycles to a staging environment. Each cycle ends with working software that can be used and tested.

Launch. The system goes to production with monitoring, error tracking, backups and a tested rollback path.

After launch. Depending on the project, ByteInk runs the system, covering deployments, dependency and security updates, incident handling and further development, or hands it over with documentation and a walkthrough of the codebase.

Technical scope

These are the stacks ByteInk builds and runs its own products on.

• Web. Next.js, React and TypeScript. Cardova, a digital business card that saves to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, runs on this stack.
• Mobile. iOS and Android apps in React Native and TypeScript, with native Swift where an app needs direct access to the platform. InstaPlayers runs on both platforms. ThinkByte runs language models on the iPhone itself.
• Backend. TypeScript services on Node.js, Go services and command-line tools, REST APIs, background job queues, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis.
• Infrastructure. Docker, Kubernetes (k3s) and Traefik. ByteInk operates the k3s cluster its own products run on. ssd, the agentless deployment tool for Docker Compose stacks that ByteInk wrote in Go, is open source.
• Practice. Strict TypeScript, linting that fails the build, error monitoring with Sentry, and every piece of configuration in version control.

The rest of ByteInk's public code is on the open source page.

Questions

How long does an engagement take?

It depends on the scope, which discovery puts in writing before the build starts.

Where is the team based?

ByteInk is based in Dubai, in the UAE. Work with teams outside the UAE runs remotely. To discuss a product, get in touch.