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- Alkali Metals
Architecture and Systems Design
The decision you make today will still be load-bearing in three years.
The decisions made in the first six months of a system's life determine the next six years. Architecture isn't about picking the right framework — it's about understanding the forces that will act on your system over time and building with those constraints in mind.
We help you make the right architectural calls before they calcify into constraints, and identify which existing decisions need to be revisited before they become crises. We design for regulated data environments from the start — audit-log-ready architecture, role-based access patterns, and data residency controls that reduce the engineering lift when SOC 2 certification becomes a requirement. ADRs, distributed system design, streaming architecture, API contracts — the work that nobody sees until it breaks.
Whether you're starting fresh or inheriting a system that's already showing stress fractures, we document the decisions that got made, model the ones still ahead, and give you a clear picture of the tradeoffs at every layer.
Engagement Process
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Discovery and Current-State Mapping
We start by understanding what you have, how it got there, and what forces act on it. This means reading existing documentation (when it exists), interviewing engineers at different levels, and reviewing current system topology. The goal is an honest picture, not a clean one.
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Constraint and Risk Analysis
Every architecture operates under constraints: team size, compliance requirements, latency budgets, cost ceilings, and organizational boundaries that determine what can actually be built and by whom. We map these explicitly before designing anything. Architectural decisions made without understanding constraints don't survive contact with reality.
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Design and Decision Documentation
We produce Architecture Decision Records for every significant choice — not post-hoc documentation of decisions already made, but live working documents created during the design process. Each ADR captures context, options considered, the decision made, and consequences. These become the institutional memory that survives team turnover.
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Review, Handoff, and Ongoing Support
Architecture doesn't end at the whiteboard. We review implementations against the design, participate in technical design reviews for major features, and remain available as a sounding board when the system encounters conditions that require revisiting foundational decisions.
Outcomes
- Architecture Decision Records for all major technical choices — written to survive team turnover
- Written constraint inventory covering team, compliance, cost, and operational boundaries
- Distributed system topology documentation your team can maintain and extend
- Migration roadmap with sequenced phases and explicit rollback checkpoints
- Technical risk register with effort estimates for remediation, usable in sprint planning
- Documented architectural vocabulary — component glossary and decision rationale — captured in ADR artifacts for team continuity
Right for You If
- Teams making foundational decisions in the first six months of a new system
- Engineering organizations inheriting a system without documentation
- Pre-scale startups that need compliance-compatible architecture from the start
- Companies entering regulated markets where SOC 2 certification or compliance-adjacent architecture is a near-term requirement
- CTOs and technical leads who need a second senior opinion before locking in a direction
- Teams where "technical debt" has become too vague to prioritize or act on
Scope and Pricing
Architecture engagements are scoped to the decisions that need to be made. A focused ADR sprint for a specific system runs 1–2 weeks. A greenfield design engagement for a new product typically runs 3–6 weeks. Ongoing architectural advisory — participating in design reviews, reviewing implementation decisions — is available as a monthly retainer. All engagements begin with a scoping call to define the specific problem and confirm fit.
Compounds Well With
These services are frequently engaged together for maximum yield.