Sombra

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of software development and QA for Wifinity, a British internet provider.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We didn’t have an in-house development team, so we brought them in to act as an outsourced developer. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra provides front- and backend software development. We work with custom Java developers and a Vue.js developer. The team from Sombra is helping us develop and maintain our captive portal and radius. Other technologies include Node.js and Kotlin. Some of the work has included migrating users to our platform and consolidating two systems. 

What is the team composition?

We work with four Java developers and one frontend developer. 

How did you come to work with Sombra?

Sombra started with my company before I did, so I’m unsure about the answer. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1 million with Sombra. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Sombra worked with my company before I started, but I believe the development began around January 2019, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure success through our ability to keep our services up and running. In the last year, we’ve solved the issues with our system and have been successful in keeping our system running. When I started, we had a backlog of over 400 tickets, and at this point, we only have three tickets. 

We also measure their success based on project delivery, and the project we’ve been working on has successfully migrated around 200,000 customers onto our platform. We’ve consolidated two systems to ensure one team can handle everything, resulting in cost savings for our company.  

Sombra has made our portal configurable; we have different customers with separate requirements regarding look and functionality, and now we can accommodate those needs. 

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle the project management on our side, but Sombra ensures everyone has the training they need to complete tasks. We primarily communicate via Slack, and we have daily stand-ups. We have open lines of communication, which makes the partnership easier. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They collaborate effectively with other companies we work with. We’ve been highly impressed with their understanding of the business and experience. It’s difficult to get a team this good and passionate; we’ve worked with other providers before, but Sombra is the best. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing we can come up with; we are very happy with their services. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ensure you always give context and details because that’s how you’ll get the best results. You should also be open with them and willing to try out ideas. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Manager

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company creates innovative population health solutions and services that improve quality outcomes, care management, and consumer experience by outputting data analytics in a dashboard format.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• To assist in improving our cloud based software
• Achieve goals set with clients and the product
• Develop and configure new data, by data aggravation, developing new dashboards to ensure client success.

SOLUTION

How did you find Sombra?

Other

Why did you select Sombra over others?

Company values aligned

What was the size of Sombra’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

We have 2 developers that assist with the framework of our product. We deliver the user story with requirements and the dev team takes the user story, analyzes and projects story points and works on the project once it is applied in a sprint. Once the project has been completed, it goes to smoke testing where the dev team tests their work, making sure it performs as expected. Some key deliverables: Multi-Factor Authentication Manage PCP Security User Role

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Approx 75% of the outcome of the projects were pushed to production without any bugs. This was 6 months ago, this has since improved by 85-90% which is a success.

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

The delivery is on time most times. Some projects are bigger and include/require change or modification which then leads going over the timeline. The response from the team is absolutely outstanding. They are very prompt and able to make any changes asked.

What was your primary form of communication with Sombra?

Virtual Meeting

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

I have worked with a larger team of developers in my past experience on a smaller scale project. The output that we receive from this team is phenomenal, having only two developers, one with the strength of 10, I am impressed with the outcome every sprint.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a nonprofit organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We have a full suite of software engineers in our organization, and we looked to Sombra to help augment the team in areas we needed to ramp up quickly and may not need a full-time employee.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra helps us fill the gaps, scale up our engineering efforts, and potentially scale down later. Initially, they discussed the projects we needed assistance with to gain a clear understanding of the positions needed and the job requirements. They pre-screen candidates and presented them to us.

They’ve helped us hire two full stack engineers capable of covering mobile UI/UX design and service development. Sombra has also helped us find a more specialized role; two game engineers focused on game mechanics, JavaScript, and UI/UX development. They needed to do custom frameworks and platform-building. 

The engineers have used AWS, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, and React Native for mobile development. On the game side, we have a proprietary framework and infrastructure to manage our game development. Currently, we’re working with Sombra to potentially test out a contract for a UI/UX designer. 

What is the team composition?

We currently work with two full stack engineers and two game engineers. Additionally, we work periodically with a project manager from Sombra.

How did you come to work with Sombra?

I found them through a Google search. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged them in June 2021, and we’re still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been impressed with the high quality of the candidates Sombra sends us. We measure their success by the engineers’ contributions to the team and their ability to work with us to produce products during a sprint. While other company cultures consider contractors outsiders, we treat them as internal team members. In doing so, we’ve had really good success with Sombra, building a productive relationship. 

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

We do most of our own project management. Sombra’s project manager serves in a supporting role to ensure our needs are met and see whether we have additional requirements. We also discuss ongoing issues or challenges in transitioning an engineer onto the team. 

Moreover, Sombra has really good communication. They’re very open to receiving feedback and often solicit input on how they’re doing; they periodically send us a survey that I forward to our team leads. This approach allows us to provide coaching for any areas we need to address. 

We primarily communicate through Jira, and Sombra’s engineers haven’t had any problems using it. Additionally, we rely heavily on Slack for communication. Since they’re integrated into our workspace, having group conversations or individual chats with them is easy.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sombra’s biggest strength is their candidate quality. Finding good technical candidates isn’t easy, and Sombra has been able to find us four. They’ve worked well with us, and their engineers are not only aligned on the technology front; they’re great cultural fits. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of any area for improvement; things have gone very well. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise ensuring clear communication lines and being honest if there are issues with their candidates. Sombra will work with you and address any challenges while onboarding resources.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software engineering manager at OANDA, a foreign currency exchange trading company. We’re also a technology company and provide the full stack of technology to enable us to fetch prices from liquidity providers and offer those prices to our customers — we’re effectively a market marker. 

Our company has trading frontend platforms that our customers use to access our services. Users can sign up for an account and put some money into it to trade various markets. I manage the development of our frontend mobile applications and our internal apps that our traders use to manage our risk and exposure to the markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

One of the challenges we face is finding talent in the marketplace: trying to find people to expand our teams. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the popularity of software developers, and since people can work from home, companies are using contractors more often.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra provides us with development staff augmentation. We use them to expand the talent pool that we have in our team and increase our capacity. They work directly with our teams offsite to develop our internal trading system for our trading desk. 

They help us with backend technologies such as Java, Spring, and APIs exposed using GraphQL. Our system runs on Google Cloud Platform. They also use Apache Kafka on the backend to stream pricing data from liquidity providers. We also have a frontend application that’s consuming our API, and Sombra provides resources to build that app. For this project, they use React and GraphQL to consume data from the backend. This is the app our internal traders use to help diminish our risk. 

The Sombra team also creates some pieces from scratch. For example, they help us with performance testing using k6. For this part, we didn’t have any previous infrastructure in place, so Sombra did all the research and experimentation. Then, they created a proof of concept and built the infrastructure themselves.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with three teammates from Sombra. Currently, we only have two intermediate software engineers working with us; one is a backend developer, and the other is a frontend developer. We also work with a business development representative. 

How did you come to work with Sombra?

My boss gave me their contact information, though I don’t know how he found them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We pay each resource $46 per hour, and they work around 160 hours per month. So far, we’ve spent $250,000 since we had a third developer for a while. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2021, and our engagement is ongoing. Our current contract ends in December 2022, but we plan to renew it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're super happy with Sombra's performance. They've been fantastic in terms of what they deliver and the quality of their work. Moreover, they can work with other stakeholders; we can give them projects, and they run with them without needing a lot of hand-holding.

They're also professional and plugged into our team really fast. They participate in sprint demos for stakeholders interested in what we do; they've taken part in these activities to present what they're doing. The Sombra team started doing these demos right away. They've also worked on five large projects they've done alone. We don't foresee ending our partnership with them; they do fantastic work, and we still have many things to do. 

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform really well from a project management standpoint. The team lead is happy with them and said he'd like to hire them full-time because they work so well with our team and are a great cultural fit. 

They participate in our team's stand-up meetings and Agile rituals, including planning and backlink grooming. As for tools, we use Jira, Confluence, and Google Docs. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm impressed with the way Sombra works and guards their culture. They don't just hire random people; they have an intake process to bring people in. Their senior resources vet and rate candidates, and only then do they hand them off to us for interviews. As a result, we've hired our developers very fast. With other agencies, it can take a while before they find someone who ticks all the boxes culturally. 

Sombra is based in Ukraine, and since our company is highly regulated, we're not allowed to hire any new people there until the Russian Invasion ends. Sombra has been working on finding people for us in other countries like Poland. They're very keen on wanting to partner with us and build things together, which is great. They've even sent people to Toronto to meet us, which no other company we've worked with has done. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything they need to improve; we're really happy with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend participating in regular check-ins and meetings with their business development representatives. That's been very helpful for us from a communication standpoint to ensure we're on the same page regarding what we're looking for when hiring. Additionally, I suggest acting on resumes as soon as possible — the early bird gets the worm.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of software development for Advantage Group International. We work in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space. Our team helps companies like Kroger’s or Walmart deal with brands like Nestle, Pepsi, and Coke. Essentially, we facilitate dialog between these companies so that they could be more efficient in delivering goods to consumers. 

My job is to direct the software development processes within our company. Even though we’re a market research firm, we also have software that drives the research and reports that we generate. We buy some products off the shelf, but we also often need to write a lot of code to integrate all software pieces together. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We’ve engaged Sombra for a number of projects. In December 2021, we engaged them to create a client portal web app, where our clients could view reports.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra developed the web app using our established databases and existing relationships, so they didn’t design it from scratch. The team handled the overall development and management of the project. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a frontend developer, a backend developer, a UX designer, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Sombra?

Sombra and I had mutual LinkedIn connections. At that time, I was looking to outsource our full stack development needs, so I reached out to various companies within Canada, Central Europe, and other places. 

Eventually, we had a conversation with Sombra, and they seemed to understand our methodology. They were willing to work in the way we liked — we wanted to be in partnership with them instead of letting them take over the whole project. They were happy to do that and be part of our team. As a result, we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $60,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

This project lasted from September–December 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were happy with the web app that Sombra put together. We tested and reviewed the product, and people enjoyed using it. 

Since we’ve taken over the project from them, we’ve had to make various small enhancements, but everything has been easy to work with — Sombra did a great job.

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

Our team used YouTrack for project management, and Sombra was happy to use it for this project. To communicate, we used Teams for its call and chat functions. Their resources also sometimes used Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sombra’s ability and willingness to work within our development framework were impressive. We already had tools, and I didn’t want to learn a whole new set of tools just because of a new partner. Given that, their resources were willing to work within our constraints; they didn’t insist that they had to do things their way. Overall, they were highly flexible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their project management could’ve been stronger. To be fair, they saw this weakness and made the appropriate effort to improve it — the current project manager had done a great job. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared. If you’re not ready to hand over the work to Sombra and your requirements aren’t clear, then you’re just wasting your money. 

You can always find internal work for internal resources, but you’re hiring contractors to do a specific task. If you’re not ready to give them that task, then what are they going to do? This advice isn’t specific to Sombra; it applies whenever you work with a third-party contractor. Have your resources ready to work with them and make documentation available. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior director at an investment and asset management company. We’re building tools to track wealth and investment research into different commodity areas such as land and commercial real estate. We’re managing wealth for a few different pension funds across the globe. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We needed to build tools that automated our analysis. There were tools available for collecting data, but none provided the analysis we needed. We required a team that could build the map behind doing the analysis on our data and produce an automation solution.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At the start, we were building basic data structures and seeing how well they could work with collecting data that they don’t have an extensive background with. We wanted to see how they would react to working with data outside of their expertise. They asked the right questions and absorbed the information properly, so we asked them to collect, analyze, and merge the information with government data.

They understood our data at a high level, able to deal with it pretty fluidly. In the end, they were able to build data structures for multiple aspects of the government, beyond the agriculture data we started with. 

From there, were pivoted to building an API that we could use for data analysis and reporting to clients. At this point, they’re finishing up the API and reporting functionalities. They’re using Node, Python, Neo4j, PostgreSQL, and Angular. 

The next step will be further project management. We’ll be able to throw full projects with them, setting budgets and scaling their team to finish this work on proper timelines. They’re working on getting us the project managers and analysts to make that work in the near future.  

What is the team composition?

We have about seven people on our account, two of which are rotational.  

How did you come to work with Sombra?

I worked with them at a previous company and had a good experience. Because of that, I recommended them here.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $1,000,000 on their work. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The automated analysis component of their work made it so that our staff can conduct analysis in seconds rather than weeks.  

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication is typically strong. We communicate through Slack and use Jira to track tasks. They’ll be working more on project management in the near future.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provide strong technical skillsets at a competitive price.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Initially, we had trouble finding the skills we needed in their project manager. We were able to correct that by swapping project managers. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have the plan for the project ready for them before engaging.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a SaaS startup. We provide online services for organizations in Sweden.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We needed staff augmentation because we currently only have 2-3 people. We’d like to use more but recruiting programmers in Sweden is difficult.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project is a SaaS service that we’ll launch at the beginning of next year. We had requirements and a mockup done, and we needed them to develop code immediately. The backend is Java and AWS Lambda functions. The frontend is Angular.

What is the team composition?

They supplied one backend and one frontend programmer. We also interacted with the project leader.

How did you come to work with Sombra?

We talked with them before the summer and considered them and another option. We did most of our research through Clutch.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from August until November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our plan was to take over the product after they were done and continue the development on our side and then provide it to customers. One of the internal metrics we had was how easily we could take over the work. They did a great job of introducing us and educating us on the solutions they had implemented.

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

They took a lot of responsibility for the quality of their work and were generally interested in producing a good product. We were involved in daily briefings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

This is the first time our company has worked with offshore resources. It was a positive experience, and we will continue to work with them. They’re proactive and took pride in the quality of their work. There was no sweet-talking or saying things they thought we wanted to hear. They voiced their opinion, and that was important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s out of their hands, but they had to work out of the office and weren’t on location together but it was barely noticeable. I have nothing to compare it with. We all had to deal with that in this project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you are involved on a daily basis and communicate a lot, then they are going to be able to produce a better product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a flooring company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We wanted to get rid of our 30-year old ERP software that we were using for our CRM warehousing, fulfillment, and ordering. We didn’t want to buy something off the shelf and we wanted to control some of the cost by going offshore and outsourcing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra does everything to do with development, including DevOps and QA. Sombra works on pushing releases, propagating them through the different environments from development to QA to production. It’s a complex state of the art architecture that runs on Google Cloud.

I create the mockups and flow diagrams and give them to Sombra, and the team runs with it. It's a Java project based on Spring that’s completely containerized, which means that it scales very well. They’re also helping us with a mobile app. 

We're going to give iPads to our sales representatives so that they can build the job right there in front of the customer. The customer can then electronically sign, and the representative will take the credit card payment over a Square reader. 

What is the team composition?

We work with a team of nine, including developers, a QA team, and a project manager. 

How did you come to work with Sombra?

We looked at a couple of different shops. Sombra’s senior teammates came to visit us, and we went to lunch together. After talking to them and hearing how they operated, they just felt like a good fit with my personal development philosophy. So it was a good match and has since proven to be absolutely correct. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’re at $500,000 per year at the moment.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in January 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sombra is very productive. We’re cranking things out with very little rework needed. We have speed and quality, which is important because the system is live, so if we make a change, it has an immediate effect on our customer base. We’ve managed to work without bringing the system down.

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re an agile shop, so we do two-week sprints. They assigned us a project manager at no extra cost who coordinates everything and makes sure that the resources have work. She coordinates the internal team meetings to make decisions around architecture.

She’s very helpful, especially since she’s not on the payroll. I handle the actual giving out of work because I’m on-premise. They communicate well and clearly. We use Slack, and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have standing meetings on Zoom. We also have ad-hoc meetings as needed. It’s a well-oiled machine.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve outsourced many projects, and none of the shops I’ve been with have been as professional as Sombra. They're extremely professional and proactive, and they have the right kind of attitude. The people they hire are all go-getters; they don’t just sit around. The team is very driven. I can tell that they’re a solid organization.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind right away.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just go ahead and work with them. This is the best offshoring experience I’ve had in my 25 years of doing this.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at Womply. We help small businesses across North America thrive in the digital world by providing them tools to manage and engage with their customers, improve their own client reputations, and get business insights. We provide additional solutions, including bill payment and money transfers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sombra?

We wanted to build a client management tool for one of our partners. We didn’t have internal developers available for the project, and it was a big revenue-generating opportunity for us. We hired Sombra for this work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sombra developed a tool that allows our partner to manage their clients, business profiles, and subscription information.

We follow our own architecture standards and made sure that whatever solution Sombra provided fit into our stack. We use AWS, and all our services are dockerized. We had collaborative discussions on the solution, and we reviewed Sombra’s designs and provided recommendations. They deployed the solution onto our AWS environment along with our DevOps team.

After this assignment, we decided to augment our team with Sombra engineers.

What is the team composition?

We worked primarily with Yuriy (Co-Founder & CTO), who worked with one frontend and two backend engineers on this project. They worked with our business development team.

How did you come to work with Sombra?

We posted an RFP on Upwork, and they were the only ones that responded. Sombra was confident that they could provide a solution within the requested timeframe.

How much have you invested with them?

The initial assignment cost $40,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sombra in April 2019, the first phase was done by May or June, and we got the tool out by July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sombra was pretty fast in delivering the solution, and it was a big revenue-generation opportunity for us. It gave us monthly recurring revenue.

How did Sombra perform from a project management standpoint?

The turnaround time was pretty good, and their project management team is great. We had daily sync-up meetings with them.

There was plenty of feedback for them once the first phase was delivered, and they took ownership in making sure that the quality met our standards. They worked with their engineers to produce quality code.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The engineers are dynamic, learn quickly, and assimilate into teams very well. A few of their engineers are leading some of our projects today. They’re working alongside our tech leads to create solutions for our clients.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had communication challenges with some of the engineers in the past, but Sombra’s project management team has been very open in taking our feedback and working on plans for necessary replacements.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should make Sombra aware of the top company initiatives so they understand what they’re working on. Beyond outsourcing, if we involve them more with our daily strategy discussions, it’ll give them exposure to our priorities.