Evil Martians

BACKGROUND

I am the Design Engineering Lead of Buildkite

Buildkite is a high-scale, hybrid CI/CD platform that lets engineering teams run fast automated build, test, and deployment pipelines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

• To create an agentic-first and framework agnostic design system and component library to build a more consistent, accessible, and faster interface.

SOLUTION

Known about them for a while through Twitter, their blog posts, and general work

• Great culture fit
• Amazing and aligned skillsets

2-5 Employees

Evil Martians partnered with Buildkite to define and begin implementing an agentic-first, framework-agnostic design system that could support experiences both within and outside the core Platform.

The work included auditing the existing UI and frontend architecture, developing a shared token and styling foundation, exploring a component model that could work across Rails and React, and documenting components through Lookbook and machine-readable guidance. Key deliverables included:

• Design system foundations
• An updated token architecture with light and dark theme support
• Initial reusable components and component patterns
• Figma explorations
• Accessibility and interaction guidance
• A complementary system of AI skills that gave coding agents access to component APIs, patterns, accessibility requirements, and design intent. Used both in the creation and consumption of components

The team also advised on modernising the frontend stack and using modern CSS, native browser APIs, and web standards wherever possible to reduce custom JavaScript and long-term maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Progress was demonstrated through concrete, production-ready outputs rather than traditional business metrics. Evil Martians completed a platform UI and frontend audit, established a shared token and styling foundation with light and dark theme support, introduced the first reusable components into Lookbook, and validated an approach that could support both Rails and React. They also delivered Figma explorations, accessibility and interaction guidance, machine-readable component documentation, a system of AI skills for coding agents, and multiple production pull requests implementing the proposed architecture. Together, these outcomes provided a working foundation and clear technical direction for a framework-agnostic, agentic-first design system.

Evil Martians managed the engagement collaboratively and transparently, maintaining regular communication and sharing work early through design explorations, technical proposals, and production pull requests. They were responsive to feedback, willing to revisit assumptions, and worked closely with our design and engineering teams as the project’s requirements evolved. Deliverables were provided within the agreed engagement period, and where priorities or timelines changed, these were discussed openly and adjusted together. Their team adapted well to our technical constraints and increasingly ambitious agentic-first direction, offering practical alternatives and specialist guidance rather than simply following the original brief.

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What stood out most was Evil Martians’ ability to combine strong product and visual design thinking with genuinely deep frontend engineering expertise. They didn’t treat the design system as a static UI kit, but as an extensible technical system for both people and AI agents. Their team was curious and collaborative, challenged assumptions constructively, and explored ambitious ideas such as framework-agnostic components, machine-readable documentation, AI skills, modern CSS, and native browser APIs. That combination of design craft, technical depth, and willingness to push beyond conventional approaches made them feel more like an embedded partner than a typical consultancy.

We had a number of changing priorities and internal challenges throughout the project, and Evil Martians adapted exceptionally well. They remained flexible, constructive, and supportive even when the direction was not always clear from our side. One area where they could have helped further would have been to establish clearer responsibilities and decision ownership across the project - identifying who was accountable for particular areas and who needed to make key calls, and what they needed for things to go smooth. There was considerable ambiguity within our team about individual roles and ownership, and a more explicit framework for this could have helped us make decisions and move forward more efficiently - but again, they handled it perfectly and this was more an issue internally!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP Platform Engineering of ClickFunnels

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

ClickFunnels is a leading platform that empowers businesses to build, launch, and optimize online sales funnels quickly and efficiently. By providing a comprehensive suite of tools, ClickFunnels allows users to create landing pages, sales pages, order forms, and membership sites without requiring extensive technical skills or coding knowledge. It is an all-in-one solution that is great for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and digital marketers alike who need a streamlined approach to converting website visitors into paying customers. Beyond funnel creation, ClickFunnels also offers services like email marketing, A/B testing, and upsell/downsell functionality, making it a robust platform for businesses aiming to scale their online presence and maximize revenue.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Evil Martians to accomplish?

• Flakey Test Mitigation
• Test Suite Migration

SOLUTION

How did you find Evil Martians?

• Referral
• Known in the Ruby Community

Why did you select Evil Martians over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Evil Martians were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Our test suite had many flaky tests, making it unreliable and untrustworthy for our engineering team. We worked closely with the team at Evil Martians to fix the suite and build out patterns to look for on future test that would potentially cause flakes to come back. We also worked closely with them to migrate from JavaScript tests for our smoke and sanity test suites to Ruby Minitests. The JavaScript tests were not maintainable by our team, since we are a Ruby company. The Evil Martians team played a key role in migrating those suites while helping us to apply learnings from the previous work on flaky tests.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We measured our flaky tests to make sure we had a significant impact on the project's flaky tests, and we eliminated many/most of them. The test suite migrate was easy to measure in that it was clear when it was done and it was done by our state goal.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The team was highly responsive to our needs throughout the projects, and they met every goal we set.

What was your primary form of communication with Evil Martians?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their team's ability to jump right into a team and begin collaborating on day one. Also, they are very skilled Rubyists, so when challenging issues arose, they would dive in to solve them to keep the project moving forward.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Evil Martians could have done differently?

Honestly, I cannot think of an area where the team could have improved.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

 I'm the head of product and customer engagement for Scout Monitoring, a web application that provides error monitoring, log management, and performance metrics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evil Martians?

 We needed help with a marketing website overhaul and migration.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

 We initially hired Evil Martians for work on our marketing website, which needed an overhaul and a new platform. We ended up engaging them to do some editorial/copy work, advise on social media and other marketing channels, execute research to support our roadmap planning, and even do some work on our existing product. Regarding the marketing website overhaul, Evil Martians has delivered two new designs and implemented them.

What is the team composition?

 We've consistently worked with three teammates from Evil Martians, although the team composition has changed throughout the project.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

 We were introduced to Evil Martians by a friend. We chose them because they have a deep understanding of developer tools, Ruby on Rails, and GTM and are very flexible with their engagement style.

What is the status of this engagement?

 We started working with Evil Martians in November 2024, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

 We've had Zoom check-ins during the design phase and used a collaborative Figma board for feedback. We've also had a final handoff of the new website. Our developers used to manage our marketing website because it was incorporated into our application, so it required a deployment to make any changes. Separating it into its own hosting environment meant that the marketing and product teams could manage the marketing site and make rapid changes without the overhead of creating more work for the development team. That's been the biggest metric, and it has allowed us to make pricing changes that introduced a free tier that has seen a significant uptick in PQLs.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

 We use Slack and Zoom meetings to communicate with Evil Martians.

What did you find most impressive about them?

 Evil Martians doesn't just execute what we give them; they partner with us and challenge the plan if they see room for improvement. They have deep expertise across the board, from project management to design and research (and obviously development).

Are there any areas they could improve?

 No, we've been very happy.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of Thicket

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Thicket.com offers live online classes, taught by experts from top universities. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Evil Martians to accomplish?

• Design, validate, and build an MVP for an online learning platform.

SOLUTION

How did you find Evil Martians?

• Online Search
• Online Forums

Why did you select Evil Martians over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Evil Martians were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Evil Martians helped us to design, develop, and launch our MVP. This included designing and validating early prototypes, creating a design system, building the application, and providing marketing support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our learning platform's usability has already recieved high praise from early users. 

What was your primary form of communication with Evil Martians?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Evil Martian's team has been extremely responsive and adaptable. They were highly invested in the long-term success of the project and empathetic toward client needs. This made communication easy and efficient, as they could quickly anticipate future hurdles and identify solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Evil Martians could have done differently?

None.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product at a managed agentic security services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evil Martians?

We needed help establishing a design system and redesigning important UX flows.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Evil Martians has helped us with configurations, prototypes, and UI components.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 2–5 teammates from Evil Martians.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

We found them through an online search. We chose them because they offered good value for the cost, and their company values aligned with ours.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2025, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve seen improvements in our product metrics and customer satisfaction.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate with Evil Martians via virtual meetings, emails, and messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with the quality of Evil Martians’ work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing they need to improve.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the Co-Founder and CEO of Lingo.dev, a software company that provides localization tools for engineers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evil Martians?

We needed help with a deep dev tool that required an excellent understanding of computer science.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Evil Martians helped us with deeply technical, devtool project that involved Node.js, JavaScript, and React.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one teammate from Evil Martians.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

I found Evil Martians through an online search. I chose them over other options because they had a great culture fit, were referred to me, and were deeply technical.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November–December 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Evil Martians completed the project's scoped roadmap on time. The project involved technical risk; however, Evil Martians completed it, and it worked great. Moreover, we received excellent user feedback.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

Evil Martians delivered on time. We communicated via in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and emails or messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Evil Martians' great technical skills were impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn't think there was anything they could improve on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing director of Aptos Labs. We develop products and applications on the Aptos Layer 1 blockchain, focusing on scalable, user-friendly Web3 solutions and tools to enhance decentralization and user experience.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Evil Martians to accomplish for Aptos Labs?

We needed help cleaning up our entire website stack to make it state-of-the-art. We also needed to integrate a CRM and get help with high-priority and timely projects that had seemingly impossible deadlines.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Full stack development. 

What is the team composition?

We've consistently worked with 1 - 2 developers and a project management. 

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

Referral. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2023, and our engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We've launched several sites with them. 

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

Great. For the most part, they are very self-sufficient with project management, giving us the right level of visibility. We communicate through virtual meetings, email, and messaging apps. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The EM team are some of the best full stack devs around. In the past when working with agencies, I've noticed a lack of ownership or willingness to push back or suggest improvements. With the EM team we handle projects as an ongoing dialogue. They often suggest ideas to improve implementation or security. Overall, they think critically about what we're asking for and how to best achieve it, instead of just blindly marching against orders. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

n/a

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder of Miru, an AI-powered investigation platform that uses a data-first, ontology-driven approach to organize and analyze complex information. Our platform enables faster and more reliable investigations for security and compliance teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evil Martians?

We needed support with the design and front-end development of our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Evil Martians was responsible for the initial UI/UX design phase, creating high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes in Figma for our new product features. Following the design phase, they seamlessly transitioned to development, assisting our frontend engineer. The team contributed code to our codebase.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2–5 teammates from Evil Martians.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

We found them through a referral. We chose them over other options because of their excellent reputation, experience, and knowledge of completed work.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent an amount that we prefer to keep confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2023, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Evil Martians has completed various components for our design and front-end development projects.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily communicate with Evil Martians through virtual meetings, emails, and messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are fully engaged and committed to delivering high-quality work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There's nothing they need to improve.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

 I'm the co-founder and CEO of a finance automation platform for enterprises in Latin America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Evil Martians to accomplish for your company?

 We needed help building the zero-to-one of our backend infrastructure.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

 Evil Martians built our entire backend infrastructure.

What is the team composition?

 We worked with two teammates from Evil Martians.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

 Someone referred Evil Martians to us. We chose them over other options because they had proven experience as 10x developers.

What is the status of this engagement?

 We worked with Evil Martians from October 2023–June 2024.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

 Evil Martians delivered a working product with a solid infrastructure. This infrastructure was the backbone of our product.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

 Evil Martians delivered on time. We primarily communicated via slack.

What did you find most impressive or unique about them?

 Evil Martians was awesome to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

 There's nothing Evil Martians could have done better.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

 I’m the CEO of a financial services company. We provide a tailored platform for family offices, automating accounting and financial reporting to deliver clear, reliable financial oversight and replace manual processes with intuitive, consolidated solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evil Martians?

 We needed to build specific features in a short amount of time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

 Evil Martians has built a reporting format module that’s highly customizable. The team has interpreted and built the features based on the requirements and designs we’ve given them.

What is the team composition?

 We’ve worked with one teammate from Evil Martians.

How did you come to work with Evil Martians?

 We found them through articles. We chose them because they had a great reputation in the space.

What is the status of this engagement?

 We started working together in September 2025, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

 Evil Martians has delivered an early prototype to play with. We’ll consider the project a success when our end users are delighted with the product.

How did Evil Martians perform from a project management standpoint?

 Evil Martians is very good at providing daily project updates and asking us about blockers. Overall, we’re happy with their project management. We communicate via Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

 We’ve been impressed with Evil Martians’ project management.

Are there any areas they could improve?

 There’s not much they can improve on.