Sunscrapers

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Engineering of a Financial Services Company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Loan and leasing comparison portal for SMEs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunscrapers to accomplish?

• Refactor the monolithic application based on Django framework.
• Fix security vulnerabilities in Python software applications.
• Develop a monolith refactoring by modularisation approach.
• Introduce technical KPIs/metrics to assess the progres of refactoring project.
• Upgrade software infrastructure on which monolithic application based on Django framework was run.

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunscrapers?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Sunscrapers over others?

Good value for cost

How many teammates from Sunscrapers were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The cooperation scope contains two projects:

1. Mitigate security risks by fixing vulnerabilities in monolithic application built on the Django framework. The project also contains cloud infrastructure upgrades and improvements as well as external library upgrades and replacements.
2. Refactoring the architecture of monolithic application by fixing its architecture and reintroduction of modular design. This includes the introduction of a special metric for counting the interdependencies of models belonging to different domains and modules.

Both projects were complex and required deep knowledge, vast experience and creativity.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

1. Monolithic application built based on the Django framework was free of security vulnerabilities and contained upgraded libraries and infrastructure components.
2. Monolith was partially modularised, and the internal team could continue the work on modularisation and receive training from Sunscrapeers experts.

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

We were defining the project together. Their teammates integrated with our company crew/teams for the time of the project and, at the same time, remained available as experts for other engineers who were not directly engaged in this project.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunscrapers?

Virtual Meeting

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

They have very strong experience in software development, especially when working with Python and Django frameworks. Their engineers were self-managed, responsible, mature, and creative.
The Sunscraper's management and key account representatives stayed in touch with the company's engineering leadership on a weekly basis with a full and authentic interest in customer satisfaction.

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

All good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Engineering Manager, Frontend of a consumer products company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a privately held company committed to offering high-quality, healthy brands and helping consumers make better choices, every day.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunscrapers to accomplish?

• Augment our software engineering team by bringing in a senior level software engineer to help fill in knowledge gaps of our in-house team.
• Help our technical leads meet deadlines by supporting in all development efforts, such as building out new features, fixing bugs, participating in our dailies, helping with code reviews and even supporting in research tasks.

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunscrapers?

Referral

Why did you select Sunscrapers over others?

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

How many teammates from Sunscrapers were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

The scope of our projects are building out full ecommerce integrated websites using external ecommerce backends and CMS platforms. Sunscrapers' software engineers was involved in the very begining, everything from designing the website architecture to implementation and even post launch bug remediation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Some of our KPIs was based on timing, deadlines, production release downtime, post launch issues, and pagespeed/lighthouse scores. We found success in majority of the items mentioned.

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

Yes, the Sunscraper software engineer that we worked with met our needs and more. They went out of their way to communicate issues and raise concerns whenever applicable. They also supported our team in growing and defining our overall frontend tech stack while completing the tasks at hand.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunscrapers?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The company communicates clearly and is very easy to work with. There is no friction at all and we're free to work pretty closely with their provided engineers as if they were our own in-house team members.

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

I honestly have no real feedback for Sunscrapers to do something differently. It is a solid relationship we have going and we're looking forward to working more together in the near future.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Vice President, Engineering of COTA, Inc

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Bring clarity to cancer by using Real World Data and Analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunscrapers to accomplish?

• Improve our Data Intake Pipeline

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunscrapers?

Referral

Why did you select Sunscrapers over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Time zone compatibility

What was the size of Sunscrapers’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

Build a Data ETL pipeline to transform and warehouse clinical real world data using NextGen Connect (Mirth) and PostgreSQL on the Google Cloud Platform. This warehouse is critical to the COTA platform and used in multiple products.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Data ETL pipeline build time and quality.

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

This project was managed by COTA. Product and design specifications were provided and the team members from Sunscrapers were integrated into the COTA team. The resources that Sunscrapers provided were prompt and communicated clearly about the tasks assigned to them. They also were quick to adapt to an environment which they were not familiar with.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunscrapers?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The Sunscrapers team has a great recruitment process, and they're transparent about their processes, given that these team members had to integrate with a larger team. They also take feedback seriously and work on it diligently. Beyond the above 2 aspects, they also helped find candidates who are willing to learn a different technology stack compared to what they had done before.

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

Nothing at the moment, keep up the great work!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a portfolio operations associate at a venture capital fund. We invest in early-stage enterprise tech companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sunscrapers?

We needed custom software development support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Sunscrapers to help us transition from the old version of our software to a new frontend whilst maintaining the backend. They’re tasked with handling general backend improvements and developing a new frontend from scratch. The software is a tool that we use to save and collect data from our companies as well as the companies that we’re evaluating if we want to invest in them. It allows us to create graphs and tables with the data. The frontend is in JavaScript in the React Framework, and the backend is SQL database with Python. 

What is the team composition?

We work with two backend engineers, two frontend engineers, a QA engineer, a project manager, and a part-time delivery manager from Sunscrapers.

How did you come to work with Sunscrapers?

Sunscrapers was referred to us by our previous development partner. We also looked at their Clutch reviews.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $1,000,000–$1,500,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The new software allows us to collect and process data more efficiently. It’s faster, smoother, more responsive, and has a more modern UI than its older version.

How did Sunscrapers perform from a project management standpoint?

Sunscrapers has performed well in terms of project management. We typically communicate through Slack, email, and Zoom meetings, and we use Jira to communicate on tickets and manage the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We appreciate how responsive and communicative they are. They’re always accessible through Slack despite the time difference.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The pace of development could be improved. Initially pace was slower than expected. We wanted to grow the team, but they were having a hard time recruiting additional engineers, so progress was slow.  The speed has been improving since we brought on the new team members and as they ramp up.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It's important to set expectations around release schedules very early on.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a very large Consumer Package Goods company with multiple brands and variety on online projects which range from Ad Campaigns to E-commerce. I oversee the software engineering team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sunscrapers?

We have used Sunscrapers predominantly as a staff augmentation service. Flexing our team size as demand requires. Sunscrapers have provided us with Python developers which have been used to support projects such as application middle ware, service development. More recently we engaged Sunscrapers to augment our Frontend team while developing some NextJS Ecommerce solutions.

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

I had worked with them while at a previous agency to great success. So they were the first people I reached out to.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

This would take several paragraphs. I don't have time. Pull from the above summary.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We identified a deadline that we could not meet with current staff and I called who I know could provide that staff.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

Sunscrapers staff has been able to integrate into our teams and work as though they are our own employees. They engage in code reviews, participate in meetings, brainstorm, and contribute like any other team member. This is huge win for us.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Sunscrapers team is part of our team.

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

I really enjoy the vetting process. We interview prospective candidates and choose who we think will work best with our team. In my experience this is rare. This has lead to great working relationships and I hope enjoyable experiences for both our team and the Sunscrapers staff supporting us.

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

Not really.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a boutique software development company. We build scalable software solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sunscrapers?

We needed an additional resource to help us fulfill a project for a client.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sunscrapers provided a backend engineer who worked collaboratively with our team. First, we gave them our requirements in terms of experience, and they gave us some possible candidates. After interviewing their recommendations, we ended up with the right resource who worked closely with us to fulfill our client’s project. Unfortunately, the client had to put the project on pause before we finished.

What is the team composition?

We primarily worked with Kamil (Business Development Engineer) and Lukasz (Co-Founder & CEO).

How did you come to work with Sunscrapers?

Some of my friends recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost about $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from March–April 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Sunscrapers team did a great job — they moved quickly to provide us with several high-quality candidates to choose from. Furthermore, the candidate we ended up with worked fast. Our client was delighted with the engagement.

How did Sunscrapers perform from a project management standpoint?

The candidate was super communicative and worked well with our team. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was a pleasure to work with Sunscrapers. Despite the time zone difference and the language barrier, they communicated well with us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing they could do better.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Engineering Manager for the internal advertising agency of a large packaged goods company based in the United States.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sunscrapers, and what were your goals?

We hired Sunscrapers to augment our development team to meet specific project deadlines set for this year.

SOLUTION

How did you select Sunscrapers and what were the deciding factors?

Several of my peers and I have worked with Sunscrapers at a previous company and had a great experience.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had several websites that needed to be converted from one platform to another as well as needing help rebuilding some internal tooling specific to our serverside development.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We contracted a full stack developer, a backend developer as well as a QA resource.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were able to meet our project deadlines with plenty of time to spare.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Working with the Sunscrapers devs was very seamless. We were able to integrate them into our daily standup meetings and continue communicating with them over Slack throughout the day. Additionally, we used ticketing and pull requests for develpment specific communication

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

Their ability to source good fitting candidates quickly and easily. was impressive.

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

Sometimes there can be some communication that needs clarification due to language barriers but it has never been a big problem.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO for Inspiration Company, a Stockholm-based company that helps our customers get more motivated employees and more loyal customers through dedicated reward programs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sunscrapers, and what were your goals?

Our tech-department had a very intense project roadmap, and we needed additional people in order to manage the workload. We didn't want to outsource projects wholesale, rather, we wanted people who could work within the existing team. Basically, we wanted someone who would act as close to a regular employee as possible.

SOLUTION

How did you select Sunscrapers and what were the deciding factors?

We wanted to make sure to keep our development operation within the EU. We did a broad survey of the region, and eventually settled on Poland and Warsaw as our first choice. From that initial search, we narrowed our search to 3 potential partners. Out of those, Sunscrapers won out due to a combination of consultant profile strength and a professional handling of the procurement process.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Sunscrapers have assisted us with continuous development work on projects as well as individual tickets. Our stack primarily consists of Django and Vue.js. We also made it clear that we wanted someone to work with relative independence, rather than just building-to-spec, so the work has also involved weighing in on architectural issues, and suggesting parts of the code to refactor and modernize.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've had one senior developer, who has worked as part of our in-house development team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Sunscrapers has given us a significant boost in our development speed. We have managed to take on and deliver on much larger tasks than we could previously manage. Moreover, Sunscrapers has given another set of eyes to the team, suggesting changes that have greatly benefited our work.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Sunscrapers has been integrated in our existing development workflow, which uses Jira and a Kanban-like model. We primarily communicate using Slack, Zoom and e-mail.

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

The candidate quality was impressive. It's rare to find someone whose experience matches our own stack so closely. I was also impressed by their professionalism during the procurement process.

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

None that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a professional development platform, and we create learning solutions for corporations who want to promote better team interaction. We conduct cross-cultural training to create inclusive environments for employees through our learning platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sunscrapers?

We’ve always had a small development team that we needed to expand, so we specifically looked for someone who could help us with frontend and React development. I tried outsourcing development resources, but we weren’t happy with the results from it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sunscrapers has assigned a dedicated developer to work with us full time. We brought them in and are really happy with their work. They provide us with management support on the site so that their developers can keep growing and learning in their roles.

We have this complex management system for all our resources and they support all of our frontend developments. They do maintenance work on the system aside from development work, and they contribute great ideas to provide effective solutions for our customers.

We’ve been so happy with the work that they’ve done that we’ve decided to bring in an additional backend developer. They feel like an in-house solution much more so than hiring from a third party so it’s been great.

What is the team composition?

We have a frontend developer and a backend developer, and we’re in the process of bringing in someone who can engage in full-stack development.

Our main point of contact is Kamil (COO), and we also have access to the CEO and CTO who I feel comfortable reaching out to whenever issues come up. But ultimately, our day to day contacts are the developers themselves.

How did you come to work with Sunscrapers?

It was a referral from a long-term partner of ours who gave us advice over the years. They had a similar arrangement with Sunscrapers where they brought in a single developer for a project who ended up becoming a full-time employee for them.

That model wasn’t something I was familiar with, so when I heard about that and the level of talent that was coming from Sunscrapers, I was impressed. I reached out to them to just fill in for an in-house role left by someone from the company, but they ended up becoming permanent members of the team.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend approximately $300,000 a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in June 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s nothing formal — we measure them more by the velocity of their work. They’ve really worked efficiently and are able to deliver on our project goals very well. I can’t give you numbers or statistics but just the overall impression that I’m very pleased with what they’ve done.

How did Sunscrapers perform from a project management standpoint?

We have one challenge that’s not necessarily their fault. They’re based in Poland, and the rest of our team is in New York and Los Angeles. So, there have been some time overlap issues we’re hoping to resolve with the new hire we’re bringing in. 

But in terms of overall delivery, they’re working really well. We recently hired a project manager to oversee projects and she works very well with the Sunscraper team, along with our technical leads in the US. They communicate with us on Slack and through the project management system that we use.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I would say the quality of the work and attention that we get from them. I’ve worked with lots of third-party development providers and firms, and we’ve never had the kind of engagement level we get from Sunscrapers with any of them.

Their development competency is much better than our experience in the past. I believe part of that comes from the investment they have in us.
Aside from that, the level of partnership that we have with them encourages greater quality in the work we can deliver.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really, the only issue that we’ve had is the overlap of time. They’ve done a good job taking on this new requirement presenting us with several great candidates who are going to work the extra hours for us. It’s not really something they could improve on, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind when thinking about the challenges of working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say be really clear about the requirements for the work or role you’re hiring with them. Also, constant communication is really important. Don’t think of them as an outsourced team, think of them as being part of your internal team as this was an important part of what made this partnership successful.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the co-founders of a company called health plan, and we’re building a platform for doctors, patients, and other health providers to prepare, manage, and review health plans for patients with chronic disease.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sunscrapers?

We are a family business. My dad is a doctor, I have a background in finance law, and my brother has technical experience but not to the scale of a project like this. Given how we’re hoping to scale it in the future and the sensitivity of patient data, we thought it would be most appropriate to bring in a third-party developer.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project is a web-based platform that allows users to set a plan in place for a patient as to how they’re going to manage and mitigate chronic diseases. The whole thing has become a lot more complex than either we or Sunscrapers envisioned in our early interactions, but we’re now reaching the final stages of development.

The backend is Python with a Django framework, and the frontend is written in React. Those are languages my brother is familiar with and thought would be most suitable for the platform, so we settled on those fairly early on. There are a lot of interacting features such as plan creation, data logging, and communication capabilities going on in the background as well.

What is the team composition?

We work with a core team of three which consists of Pawel (Operations Manager, Sunscrapers) and one backend and one frontend developer as well. At a few stages, we added a couple of others to speed up the process, but that has been their team dealing with us quite regularly.

How did you come to work with Sunscrapers?

We actually found them on Clutch. We were recommended to look at developers based in Poland by a couple of people we know in Australia who have worked with teams there before, and the most useful resource that came up was Clutch.

We got in touch with 8–10 developers on your platform and went through a pitching process. At the end of that, we decided that Sunscrapers were a perfect fit.

How much have you invested with them?

The total development and design cost will be about $200,000 Australian dollars (approximately $138,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in April of this year and are still working together, though we are in our final sprint for the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s a little early to tell how the application will be received, but just last week we started using it with a few surgeons and nurses that are developing health plans for their patients. So far, the feedback has been quite positive.

They all say it’s a useful platform and provides them with all the features and flexibility they need to do that kind of work. It basically does exactly what we wanted it to from the outset.

How did Sunscrapers perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very responsive to all of our requests. We speak with them on a daily basis and make sure that everyone is on the same page, and then communicate back and forth as needed if we have any issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve been extremely easy to work with. I have plenty of experience dealing with other teams on projects over my career and I really think that Sunscrapers do a great job of mailing themselves easy to work with and making the process enjoyable for everyone. On top of the fact that their technical standards are so high, I think they really stand out from the competition.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think our key issue has been the overall cost of the project, which has gone outside of what we budgeted for, but that has been more because of how complex the project ended up being. They quoted us in line with all of the other teams that we spoke to, so I don’t think there’s anything that Sunscrapers could have specifically done to stop that from happening.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s good to focus on the backend structure before you get started on the project. Making sure everyone’s on the same page and really developing that structure before you start to flesh the project out will save you a lot of time in the long run.