Python Powerhouse - Web & Mobile development teams
We are Europe’s largest Python software house. We have over 200 Python, JS, React Native and full-stack developers ready to supercharge your project with extraordinary code, the Agile way.
Based in Poland, we employ a total of over 350 people including Product Designers, Manual QA and QA Automation, DevOps, Machine Learning, Data Engineers and business communication experts ensuring smooth cooperation with our partners.
With 15 years of experience under our belt, we can provide full-stack web development and cross-platform mobile app solutions to clients across all industries using Python Django, Flask, Go, Angular, ReactJS, React Native and more. Moreover, we are proud to work with long-term technology partners throughout the US, Canada, Western Europe, Scandinavia, South Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.
Great software begins long before the first line of code is written. That’s why we start our development process with Discovery workshops, UX/UI, web graphic design and deep analysis of your business needs.
At STX we can easily translate your ideas into successful digital products. Want to learn more? Contact us.

headquarters
other locations
Focus
Portfolio
Mastercard, Decathlon, Tiqets, Seerene, Verve, Hogarth WW, Pixomondo, Unity Technologies, Blocktrade, IMD Optimad, Wunderman, Vyze, Coras, Realface, BetBright, KNMP, Paze, Decernis, Scurri, Buildfax, Newable, and more.

Decernis—regulatory expertise on product safety compliance
ABOUT
Based in Washington DC, Decernis provides regulatory expertise and systems to manage food, consumer, and industrial product safety compliance across more than 180 countries. Decernis gives clients a complete regulatory intelligence on the market through unique, fully integrated, patented technology platforms covering over 80,000 regulations.
CHALLENGE
Decernis’ application was based on a fairly old technological stack. Supporting the technology was a growing challenge, and Decernis saw the need to push the project into a direction where they could switch to newer technologies with better support. Another challenge for Decernis was finding a partner who could work with their multiple offices in various locations around the globe and across multiple time zones.

meet.mba—an MBA social networking platform
ABOUT
meet.mba is an online networking and communication tool designed for MBA admits, students, and alumni. It was created by Matthew Brooke-Hitching, an MBA who noticed the need to improve communication and collaboration throughout the business school journey. The resulting online platform now connects almost 4,000 MBAs and Executive MBAs around the world.
CHALLENGE
The reason to create the meet.mba platform was the lack of an appropriate tool that would allow MBA students and alumni to effectively communicate with each other.
Matthew Brooke-Hitching chose STX Next on account of the knowledge, tools and experience we could provide. We had a tight deadline for completing the product, but managed to stand up to the challenge.
STX Next delivered a full Scrum team with support from a PO, advised on the scope of the MVP, and helped prioritize tasks. Our tech stack included Django, React, PostgreSQL, Docker, and more.
The MVP allowed meet.mba to gain 500 users in the first 3 months from launch. Its features include intuitive private and group chat, user profiles with deep privacy customization, and a global board for requests for help, all tailored specifically to the MBA experience.

Vyze—financing platform for retailers, acquired by Mastercard
ABOUT
Vyze is a leading financial technology company for retailers and manufacturers, acquired by Mastercard in 2019. By combining a comprehensive lending supply, technology, and support under one roof, Vyze is able to deliver businesses simpler, more satisfying financing experiences for their customers, wherever and whenever they shop. Formerly known as NewComLink, Vyze raised $13 million in series B funding in 2016, bringing the total funding to $35 million.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for Vyze was scaling up their internal development team—bringing resources on board with the right skill set, who could hit the ground running and be able to execute on their strategy. They required qualified developers with extensive knowledge and prior experience.
STX Next is meeting the challenges of the project head-on. Firstly, simultaneous dedication to two platforms alone is quite demanding. Secondly, certain solutions implemented in these products could not be found in other financing platforms, meaning the developers had to design the solutions from scratch. Finally, as the project progresses, the team is not only developing a cutting-edge fintech application, but also working together with Vyze to implement the best Scrum practices.
STX Next Delivered
- On-site financing platform for retailers
- Fulfilling eCommerce financing experience
- Advanced and robust API
- Full automatic test coverage with Behave and Selenium
- Secure online credit applications and payments
- Quick credit assessment
- Intuitive front-end design

Unity—BuildBot-based continuous integration tool
ABOUT
Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich, interactive 2D, 3D, VR, and AR experiences. Unity’s powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems.
CHALLENGE
Due to their large scale of operations and specific needs, Unity Technologies decided to create in-house tools for software development. Unity Technologies asked STX Next for assistance in maintaining and steadily improving one such tool called Katana.
Katana is a fork of BuildBot—a continuous integration tool written in Python using the Twisted framework. With one master server, Katana is able to use an unlimited number of slave machines to perform builds.
STX Next helped create Katana to meet the demand of more than 10,000 builds per day. With its scale, Katana is crucial for Unity’s daily operations, as any downtime would affect hundreds of Unity’s developers. Challenges included resolving memory leaks, dealing with race conditions, and adding new features to the highly sensitive system.

BuildFax—property intelligence solutions
ABOUT
BuildFax provides business-critical property condition and history data to the largest insurance and financial institutions in the world. Based in Austin, Texas, the company delivers detailed data on remodeling, solar installations, major systems, new construction, maintenance history, and more. Their database encompasses over 84 billion data points on commercial and residential structures. In 2019, BuildFax was acquired by Verisk—a leading data analytics provider in the US.
CHALLENGE
Our goal was to provide BuildFax with modern tools for handling big data. Before working with STX Next, their speed of receiving data sometimes took up to four times longer than the maximum time business logic allowed.
Our solution to BuildFax’s challenge was using the Spark technology; or, more specifically, its Python implementation: the PySpark and Databricks tools.
To accomplish this, STX Next provided a team of three developers whose task was supporting the BuildFax team throughout that difficult and trying process.
BuildFax were very happy with our services and expanded their team as time went by, most notably with 24/7 maintenance and monitoring.

Tiqets—a ticket-booking platform
ABOUT
Tiqets is an innovative platform for booking tickets to museums and attractions around the world. Since it was founded in 2014, the company has sold over 10 million tickets to more than 2,000 venues in 60+ countries. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Tiqets employs over 200 people and has offices in various locations globally. It’s raised €54 million in a recent funding round led by Airbnb.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for STX Next was to find ways to integrate the Tiqets platform with as many ticket providers as possible, so that users would no longer need to register with each of them individually while planning their trip.
We were able to meet the client’s expectations by moving from a monolithic system to a microservice-based architecture, which was able to make direct contact with ticket suppliers via a variety of APIs.
To make sure that the platform was fully integrated with vendors at all times without disruptions, we also delivered round-the-clock, real-time monitoring services. They allowed us to have a full picture of the integrations at any given moment and step in to fix any issues before they escalated. Where vendors didn’t provide any API for us to integrate with, we created web crawlers that went through their pages to purchase tickets.

NOTA NOTA—personal fragrance-mixing system
ABOUT
NOTA NOTA allows designers and creators from all over the world to design and share perfumes. It’s a new concept of mixing perfumes as part of your daily routine, just like using your coffee machine. NOTA NOTA received the iF Design Award in the Product category in 2018.
CHALLENGE
NOTA NOTA wanted to build an app that would streamline the user flows and interface, as well as expand the social functionalities.
STX Next worked in continuous feedback mode, adjusting features and screens to the client’s needs as quickly as possible. We put a great deal of effort into making the product easy to develop and maintain by using automation and containerization, static typing and static code analysis support, and automated unit testing.
To reduce the costs both during and after development, we built the new NOTA NOTA app from scratch using React Native for cross-platform mobile development. We also used tried-and-tested, out-of-the-box solutions to limit the cost of features such as analytics, push notifications, or crash and error reporting.
Product Design played a key role in the development process, working hand in hand with the development team to create a seamless experience. All the core app functionalities were redesigned by applying new user flows and interactions for designing, producing, and sharing perfumes.

Lamden—speeding up the process of creating blockchains and apps
ABOUT
Lamden is a suite of developer tools that speed up the process of creating new and custom blockchains and apps. The Lamden Tau token connects these new projects together to create the first ever blockchain enterprise solution. The Tau token has a more general use as a universal swap token between most existing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. This will allow TAU to exchange seamlessly between endless cryptocurrency pairs.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Clove, which we are working on, is a decentralized application that makes atomic swaps between chains easy. Most Bitcoin-based and Ethereum-based chains, including ERC20 tokens, are compatible with the protocol. Clove enables decentralized payment channel swaps and facilitates trustless communication between compatible blockchains on the network.

Seerene—a code and people management platform
ABOUT
Seerene is a code+people management platform that sets a new standard for how CIOs manage their most important resources – their codebase and engineering capacity. The company is based in Germany with additional offices in Hong Kong and the US.
CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge for the multiple product teams in this project has been finding the right way to implement deep analytics algorithms that transform low-level code-related metrics into KPIs and insights for C-Level users, Seerene’s target group. The team is constantly developing new features and machine learning capabilities into the product to make the raw data more consumable and full of value for decision makers of large corporates.
STX Next tackled the challenge by providing 2 full Scrum teams (+ Product Design support) and integrating their work with Seerene’s internal teams.

Zappi—a platform supporting supply teaching
ABOUT
Zappi is a new company on the UK supply teaching market. They come with 20 years of experience in recruitment and education and a strong focus on positive user experience and employee happiness. Their new app effortlessly connects teaching and support staff with local schools for supply work—making the process faster, easier and more transparent. Zappi teachers lead to happy kids!
CHALLENGE
Zappi approached us with the need to design and build their application almost from scratch. But they knew they wanted Python, as they were well-versed in its advantages. They emphasized developing the application following good practices. We used the design thinking process to shape the solution and agile methodology to implement it. Thanks to our joint efforts, the Zappi idea of creating freedom of choice for schools and supply staff is live.

Signal Kit—smart communication tools for the K-12 community
Signal Kit is a complete communication suite for the K-12 community. With cloud-based mass communication, internal collaboration, business intelligence and industry leading oversight.
STX Next delivered:
- Discovery workshops followed by a UX Audit of the existing web system to understand the potential risks, test usability and accessibility, find friction points, and recommend improvements.
- A full-featured React Native mobile app.
- Web App Improvements. We took an existing system and improved its design coherency to create or adjust the features that met the requirements of the users and business partners. We also prepared the product for future improvements.
- Product recognition support through various design tasks, from product marketing materials, through motion and interaction designs and vision, to small interface tweaks.

Newable—easy business loans
ABOUT
Newable Limited is a leading SME lender in the UK. Newable Limited and Liberis Limited. Newable Business Finance is focused on enabling growth of UK SMEs through the provision of finance to those who feel they are unable to access finance through mainstream providers (such as banks).
CHALLENGES
Newable reached out to us with a complete idea for the product’s MVP and a very short deadline. They were faced with the task of transferring their whole loan application process from paper printed documents to the Internet. The system had to be easy to understand and use and reduce application time for end-customers while still including several levels of approval.
STX Next delivered the entire platform along with automatic payments/payouts, integration with external tools, and additional mentoring services.

Blocktrade—a crypto trading platform
ABOUT
Blocktrade is a state-of-the-art crypto trading platform that prioritizes speed, reliability and safety. It allows retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited and highly secure way.
CHALLENGE
Blocktrade’s challenge was to build a top-of-the-line trading portal in the shortest possible time window and build an internal team of experts who will take over the development of the solution provided by STX Next. Working with Blocktrade, we created a web application that will allow retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited, highly secure way, performing similarly to Nasdaq.

TBSeen
ABOUT
TBSeen is a startup run by 12 British female celebrities, including the founder Kate Thornton. TBSeen.com brings together money-saving deals, offers, and rewards from 500 carefully-curated brands, blended with original, entertaining and helpful content.
CHALLENGE
TBSeen is a unique start-up case. Due to celebrities bringing in followers that immediately converted to sales, the site is making money from day one. The problem was scaling up: with a London agency of just a few devs, TBSeen could not keep up with the pace of their business growth. The need to scale rapidly and within budget brought TBseen and STX Next together.
STX Next provided TBSeen with discovery workshops, a full Scrum team, full-stack development, automated testing, business analysis, continuous integration and product design services.

Verve
ABOUT
Verve (Formerly known as StreetTeam) is the world’s leading peer-to-peer sales and marketing software for live entertainment. Verve enables its customers to turn their most influential fans into ambassadors who promote their events, selling more than 300,000 tickets in 14 countries since 2012.
CHALLENGE
Verve came to us with an original product built in PHP and a long list of reasons why they wanted to switch to Python going forward, referring to it as a more modern solution. Their current development team is well-versed in PHP but not Python, so they were looking for a provider to manage development in the midterm while their own developers got up to speed on using Python.
STX Next Delivered
- A global platform that enables advocates to experience the products that they love with their friends
- A unique SaaS application for brands, campaign managers and ambassadors
- A system that builds a strong relationship between events and their fans
- Advocacy driven model that can work in almost any vertical that has a shared experience at its core

Coras
ABOUT
Connecting the world to tickets. Based out of Dublin, Coras allows customers to purchase tickets for any event or activity, through whatever online channel they choose.
CHALLENGE
For Coras, the challenge was releasing a working MVP of their product in a short period of time in order to secure another advance of their financing. They were looking to create an app from scratch to serve as a ticket distribution platform for cultural and entertainment events from many content providers. One of the main issues was finding a common solution for all stakeholders of the project and integrating it with one of the major European airlines.
STX Next Delivered
- 2 Full Scrum teams to meet the designated goals of the project.
- Manage the mark back of tickets from one seller to the other for both general admission and seated events
- Track ticket sales across all allocated sellers with a complete audit trail from allocation to sale
- Create events and allocate tickets to ticketing agents or through user’s ticketing system
- API that allows any ticketing system to integrate with Coras, helping to adjust the process to meet specific needs

Realface (Acquired by Apple in 2017)
ABOUT
RealFace was a company whose mission was to revolutionize the way people are recognized. They were creating A.I software with the aim of bringing back human perception to digital process, delivering to customers the technologies needed to connect with their consumers in the digital era. Acquired by Apple in 2017.
CHALLENGE
RealFace was looking for a tech partner who could integrate their library written in C and take over development from a previous company. Their real challenge, however, was to find developers who could understand the logic of the AI face recognition system and deal with GPUImage and the dlib face detector.
STX Next Delivered
Using the most advanced technologies in A.I, developed in-house, STX Next created a user centered authentication service. Meet the first anti-spoof application tailored for everyday use on your device.
FEATURES
- iOS and Android
- Face detection functionality
- Libraries: OpenCV, dlib
- Mp4 with av-Foundation
- Connections with Amazon S3

Pixomondo
Pixomondo is an international visual effects company with a global network of studios in Los Angeles, Toronto, Stuttgart, Beijing, Vancouver, Frankfurt and Shanghai. The company is revolutionizing its industry offering visual effects production and supervision, CG character creation, 3D animation and pre-visualization for the feature film, television, and commercial industries. Among their projects are Game of Thrones, Star Trek Discovery, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., X-Men, Fast and Furious and Wonder Woman.
CHALLENGE:
Pixomondo receives video frames from their clients in different formats with different naming conventions and file structures. Each asset requires specific preprocessing which until now was done semi-automatically with console tools. Their challenge was to create a configurable desktop application with a UI for automating the preprocessing step, allowing Pixomondo to implement further image processing.
SOLUTION:
To achieve this goal, STX Next used sophisticated logic combined with regular expressions. It led the team to create a variety of unique processors dedicated to transforming the required files. All of the logic is easily configurable through a dedicated desktop application. This allowed us to retain the flexibility of console tools, but also greatly speed up batch operations and minimize the manual work behind repeatable tasks.

finstreet
ABOUT
finstreet GmbH provides consulting services to banking and financial services organizations in Germany. Their focus is on the conceptual design, as well as the development and distribution of digital products and business models.
CHALLENGE
finstreet’s biggest challenge was the race against time. They needed to create a banking application in less than 4 months. The app required fully responsive web design while providing the highest quality of user experience. At the same time, server-side app security was a top priority for this banking project.
STX Next Delivered
- 1 Full Scrum team
- Backend Development
- Frontend Development
- UI Design
- Automated Testing
- Automation of deployment processes

FusePump
ABOUT
FusePump is a strategic partner for brands, helping them understand and apply technology to succeed in digital commerce. Established in 2009, FusePump started by offering technology that scrapes websites and returns organized, high-quality, real-time data. In 2011, the company launched the first ever BuyNow solution which uses the same data-retrieving expertise to connect customers with live retailer prices.
CHALLENGE
The client came to us with an idea for the product’s MVP. The system needed to be easy to use and flexible enough to build different types of advertisements. The biggest challenge for FusePump was to provide a common solution for all clients who had different needs.
STX Next Delivered
- One permanent and one temporary Scrum Team available exclusively to the client
- A set of features and tools extending the basic functionalities of the platform (e.g. providing a data validation tool and a data mapping tool)
- Analysis and ideas for improvements to the development process – delivered as a workshop in the spirit of Lean process management

The Outplay
ABOUT
Analytics, DMP and DSP solutions based on cookie-less technology. Myntelligence helps companies put their customers first, to transform these customer’s digital model into a user-centric business and manage audience buying independently.
CHALLENGE
TheOutplay was looking for a tech partner to create an MVP of their product. Their goal was to present the MVP to potential clients and investors and secure further rounds of funding. They were looking for a quick and cost-effective solution to have a presentable prototype as soon as possible.
STX Next Delivered
- User’s data visualization with interactive charts
- Ability to group unique users into segments
- Online campaigns management module
- Campaign efficiency analysis module
- Admin panel for platform management (creating accounts, managing permissions, etc.)
- “Demo account” for sales presentations purposes
- Marketplace functionality for trading the segments

T Dispatch
ABOUT
T Dispatch was a progressive software development company which has built a unique dispatch system for passenger transport fleets.
CHALLENGE
Due to T Dispatch’s diverse, global customer base, there was a demand for localized customer features and payment service provider integrations. The development team also had to focus on improving the performance of the overall system in order to handle an increasing number of end-users.
STX Next Delivered
- New search engine, over 10 times faster than the previous one
- Increased performance which eliminated system outages
- Security improvements related to booking and payment processes
- Integration with payment providers in 7 countries

Inteligo (PKO Bank Polski)
ABOUT
Inteligo Financial Services S.A. is one of the first online banks in Poland. It is owned and operated by PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest bank by market value and listed among Forbes Global 2000 in 2016.
Completed in 2014.
STX Next Delivered
- A proprietary (open-sourced) module stxnext. staticdeployment enabled generating a static version of the content
- Existing infrastructure was integrated with a CMS Plone system
- A reliable ‘storing data in relational database’ architecture was created which enabled the CMS application to operate in a hot standby mode
- Integration with Google Maps to enable search of ATM locations
- The portal was linked with tracking systems and forms to open accounts and deposit money was created

Key Ingredient
ABOUT
Founded in 2005, Key Ingredient is based in Austin, Texas, and features more than 2 million recipes that have been shared by cooks over the years. With about 3,000,000 unique visitors per month, their largest demographic segment consists of millennial home cooks.
CHALLENGE
The website, despite its long existence, was poorly optimized for SEO and the design required some refreshment, especially on the mobile site, because the majority of the users access the website from a mobile device. Another issue was that the page loading time was highly insufficient. The code itself contained a lot of legacy code, with outdated libraries and unused features.
STX Next Delivered
- Site speed improvement (4-5x faster)
- The highest SEO ratings due to front-end, back-end, and sitemaps improvements
- Streamlined technical stack by moving categories to elastic search (removing Oracle), moving pages to site (removing Unbounce)
- Moved ad code to site for better targeting, and higher revenue (managing ads and vendor in Doubleclick)
- 4,5 TB of unused stored data cleaned
- Secure https protocol, instead of previously used http
- Fully responsive web design (still in progress)
- Food industry articles available to users
- Admin Panel, redesigned and upgraded with new tools (such as image management)
- Automated tests (Selenium, Behave) to increase site quality

Key Ingredient Mobile
ABOUT
Key ingredient is a social networking application for cooking enthusiasts. The application contains over 2 million recipes, which users browse, share and collect into personalised cookbooks. Key Ingredient offers text recognition system for digitizing recipes as well as text to speech engine, allowing to list the recipes.
FEATURES
- iOS and Android platforms
- Text recognition system
- Text-to-speech engine
- Internal currency system (Key NotesTM)
- Mobile ads platforms: Amazon Ads,
- MoPub, TapJoy
- Mobile payments: Google Play, Amazon, iOS In-App Purchases

Polish State Forests (Lasy Państwowe)
ABOUT
Polish State Forests (Polish: Lasy Państwowe) is a Polish governmental organization that manages state-owned Polish forests on behalf of the Polish State Treasury. The agency is among the top 20 companies in Poland based on revenues from sales. (This project was Completed in 2014)
STX Next Delivered
- Portal based on a modern CMS that allows intuitive and convenient content management accompanied by a new graphic design.
- Due to performance requirements, modern caching techniques were employed.
- We used tools, such as Munin and Nagios, allowing for the monitoring of the server status and alarming the agency in the event of problems.

Paze.me
ABOUT
Paze was founded on the premise of eliminating the dependency on short-term credit and encourage working people to save. It is a next-generation consumer finance company that lets customers get the money they’ve already earned without waiting for payday. Paze does this by paying customers their salary on a daily, weekly, or on-demand basis and collecting from the employer at the end of the month.
CHALLENGE
Paze needed to scale up their development team quickly while ensuring that they bring software engineers with the right skills on board. They were about to launch their service and needed more resources for support and future development.
STX Next Delivered
- Every day reports about reconciliation
- Tab for checking statuses of disbursements
- Using cards for paying installments after opt-out
- Tab for employers to manage their employees

cielo24
ABOUT
Cielo24 delivers searchable captions, media data and media intelligence for large media platform partners in the online education, enterprise, news, and entertainment markets. Their clients turn to Cielo24 to meet the growing demands on their multimedia including compliance laws, discoverability, reach and user engagement.
CHALLENGE
Due to limited internal bandwidth, Cielo24 sought a qualified technology partner to support their inhouse development team on a series of complex projects. They were looking for skilled developers who could develop and maintain their product.
STX Next Delivered
- User requirements validation
- Project scoping
- Data preparation and migration
- Custom functional development
- User Interface/User Experience
- Performance testing, maintenance and support

KNMP
ABOUT
KNMP (The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association) is a Dutch umbrella organization for both professional pharmacists and the pharmacy in general. It promotes both the interests of its members and the interests of the pharmaceutical sector in the Netherlands.
CHALLENGE
The goal was to create a viable product that would help KNMP manage shortages and inform specialists about supply forecasts. The ambitious goal was to be completed within a fixed price/fixed scope project. Despite very thorough documentation, the final product needed to evolve to fit the needs of the end users.
STX Next Delivered
- A custom Content Management System that allows the management of medicine shortages
- An application design that enables the user to easily update content
- A system that quickly notifies doctors, pharmacists, and patients of the availability of a particular medicine

BetBright
ABOUT
Based in Dublin and founded in 2012, BetBright is an online UK sports betting and gaming operator. BetBright takes an innovative and disruptive technology-based approach to winning on the product, which delivers the very best user experience possible.
CHALLENGE
With three internal teams already working on their project, BetBright found themselves with a need to scale up their development rapidly. In order to do so, they were looking for capable and affordable developers with the ability to make an immediate impact.
STX Next Delivered
- Casino “Quick Deposit” allows users to continue to deposit money during the game without interruption
- Mobile page redesign including Blog & Widgetisation allows BetBright customers to stay updated with current events
- “Recall” adds personalized bet recommendations based on the customers’ bet history. (15+% conversion)
- “Automated Bonus” feature potentially adds 10% to every new customer LTV
- Live Casino for Mobile enables users to place bets using mobile devices
Reviews
the project
Custom Software Dev for Shipping Service Provider
"We have a pretty good relationship with them."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CTO of a shipping services provider. We’re a SaaS product that facilitates the generation of shipping labels, tracking, and return for e-commerce.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We were experiencing rapid growth in our organization and were looking for different ways of scaling our development team.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Our company integrates with carriers, logistics service providers, and on the other side, with e-commerce systems and online stores. We required additional development capacity on integrating new logistic service providers. They’re responsible for building and integrating those logistic service providers into our product.
Our internal development team is responsible for the operational side of things. We provided them with some tools and interfaces so they can work dependent on our development team. That allowed us to scale up their team and make sure they’re working efficiently as well.
What is the team composition?
We initially started with a two-person development team on their side to help with this, and it’s now been expanded to a team of six developers and one product owner.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
The team reached out to us about two years ago. They visited us in the office, and it was an enjoyable talk. Based on an initial exploration together with them, we started on a trial project, which was successful. We then continued our collaboration.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve invested between $50,000–$100,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
Our ongoing engagement with STX Next started in April 2020.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We keep track of new business and revenue, especially new business that we can onboard into our product based on logistic service providers that they integrated into our product. We’re satisfied with their work.
We have a pretty good relationship with them. The quality of work they deliver is of a high standard.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
Initially, the project management part was on our side. It wasn’t until two months ago where we got a dedicated project manager. We have weekly checkups with their delivery managers, and our account manager also participated in those calls.
Since we’re happy and they’re performing well, there’s no real need to deep dive into their actual performance numbers.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The engineering culture that they have closely fitted how we run and build software. It allowed them to be quite well integrated with our own development teams. They provide highly skilled developers and focus on other things like communication and making sure there’s a delivery manager there to make sure that the team is actually performing. It raised the bar to make sure they’re delivering work fast with high quality.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, we’re quite satisfied with their services.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Get a good relationship with their developers. They are highly skilled. If your team works with them, make sure that the engineers get together and iterate over some ideas. They’re engaged and want to provide shared knowledge rather than just building things.
the project
Java Script & Python Dev for Marketing Platform
"With STX Next, you can count on them to have the expertise you need."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the global product and engineering director at Hogarth Worldwide.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We have our own digital asset management (DAM) system, which we built a long time ago. We had to maintain it and evolve it into new versions. We needed staff augmentation to help us.
What was the scope of their involvement?
They provided software development services and QA engineers to implement the requirements we gave them during the automatic quality process control. We use JavaScript, React, and Python. We have our own team that is responsible for deploying the software into production and maintaining the environment.
We follow a scrum methodology. We work with them to refine those requirements. They give us the team that is allocated to us. Then they go into sprints. From there, they deliver the completed feature. We pick a chunk every two weeks.
What is the team composition?
There are 11 people and soon to be 12. There’s a delivery manager that handles the account.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
I wasn’t at the company when we hired STX Next, but I think it was from a contact that was here before me.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in July 2013 and the work is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Since I joined, we went through a little bit of a reformation, and now we’re working in a way that’s much more focused on the cadence of delivering constant features and value to our stakeholders and product. We’re working towards the completion, the achievements of each sprint has its own goal.
Every sprint we achieve or don’t. Every two weeks, it’s either a yes or no, and then we then decide if we need to improve anything or not.
We’re also emphasizing the happiness of the STX Next team, making sure they’re happy and working well alongside our team. If the team is happy, we can throw all these different changes of pace and the way we need to react to the business while keeping the morale high. That has improved significantly in the last few months, and now everybody on the team is saying they’re happy working with the rest of the team. They’re feeling accomplished.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
We manage the project on our side. They give us technical expertise. They have to manage their own tasks and be self-organized and assign the tasks internally. STX Next is very good at that but there’s no function of project management. It’s more about having team unity, and they achieve that.
What did you find most impressive about them?
It’s good when we aim for a partnership and they are as committed to delivering as we are. If you approach it as a vendor/client relationship, it’s a different kind of relationship. We’re all committed as a single group. There are no borders between STX Next and us in terms of who we’re working with. We all work as a single team.
Are there any areas they could improve?
We had communication issues in the past and issues of motivation but we worked through them in 2020. We’re in a much better place. We now have the relationship we always wanted to have. If we ever end the relationship, it won’t be because of the way we work together. It’d be for financial reasons or we discontinue the project.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
If you’re in the market for a partner in Poland, they’re good. They take care of their people. Their expertise in Python and JavaScript is good. They’re solid. They stay there for a long time and develop their own people.
With STX Next, you can count on them to have the expertise you need. If you’re looking for a reasonably priced, Europe based, nearshoring or offshoring outpost, they could be a good option.
the project
Python Dev Resources for Software Consultancy
“They were quite competent in Python and had excellent technical skills.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the transformation director for an independent software consultancy. We undertake all aspects of consultancy, from management consulting to bespoke systems development and support. Typically, we build online services for governments in the UK and Australia.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We were working with a government organization in the UK to build a system for registering child minders and early years care provision.
What was the scope of their involvement?
They provided development services. We were building a web-facing service for people to register childminders, and what STX Next did was support us with additional Python development capacity.
We ran scrum agile. We had a Jira board and worked in sprints, with a scrum master and a product owner. STX’s developers picked up bill tickets, so they worked alongside our own development team and provided additional bandwidth.
What is the team composition?
We mainly worked with developers, but we also had an account manager, Marta (Recruitment & EB Specialist). That was a useful way of making sure the service was to the quality and need that we had.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
My colleagues found them through an online search for nearshore developers. We visited their facility and decided to do a trial engagement with them.
What is the status of this engagement?
We worked together from February–December 2019.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We measured success and quality using the Agile process. The work was essentially packaged up as epics, stories, and tickets within Jira, and we adopted definitions of ready to ensure stories were properly defined. We did a lot of that and consulted STX's developers in certain cases.
They then took those stories forward and supported acceptance by the product owner to meet the definition of done. If there were any quality issues, they resolved them. The remit was to gain acceptance of the stories they’d taken from the product owner. More broadly, they contributed to bringing together a government UK service that is now live. Their part was a valuable and important contribution to the work. We were happy with their performance and have contracted them for another engagement. I suppose that tells its own story about how well the partnership was.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
They did perfectly well; they were no big issues. They were flexible in a dynamic environment that had frequent changes.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They were quite competent in Python and had excellent technical skills. They delivered what they promised to a good depth and level. We were very happy with them.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, I don’t think so.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Clearly define the scope of work you want them to undertake. Try to keep the pipeline flowing.
the project
Discovery Workshop & UX Design for B2B Media Firm
“The level of expertise that they have available due to the size of their firm was astounding.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the COO of Brief Media. We’re a media STX Next in the B2B space. We create product for veterinarians that are clinical reference tools We have media brands as well as subscription-based digital products.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We’re launching a new product early next year, and especially with COVID-19, we wanted to take a different approach to how we thought we were going to launch the new product and look more closely to opportunities to leverage our existing subscriber base.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Essentially, they did a discovery workshop and concept design. We already have an idea of what we want our new product to be, but they challenged our ideas and assumptions for features and UX.
We came away with eight deliverables, helping us leverage their expertise from a business perspective. We came away with requirements, a road map, recommendations on the system architecture, concept design, and prototype. Then they gave us an estimate for team composition needed to develop the platform.
This helped with product management. They also assessed how we could balance our business interests with providing the most value to the end-user subscriber.
What is the team composition?
We did most of our work with two people. One was representing the business and product aspect. Then we had another on the UX experience side and user journey. We also worked with a third who spent their time digging into the technical requirements.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We originally heard about them from a technology consultant that we’ve worked with in the past. We had STX Next actually quote a different project awhile ago. Then, as we got more into our new product development, we had additional conversations with them in order to learn what they offered. After hearing about this discovery workshop, we decided to bring them on.
How much have you invested with them?
The discovery workshop was about $15,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
The discovery workshop began in June 2020 and wrapped up in July. We recently started development with them, which is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
They presented new ideas to help us leverage our additional subscriber base and upsell them this new product. They took the ideas we had and were able to expand on that. I think we will have an easier launch as a result.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
Their communication was very thorough. From the proposal they provided, we knew the phases of the process would be. That included dates and which members from our team needed to participate with each session. We also had a good idea what the expected deliverables and outcome would be.
Whenever there were changes to the plan, it was because we covered more than expected in each session or because we needed more time in certain areas based on the results of the project. Overall, it turned our pretty well.
For the most part, we used email for this project. They also had Miro, which was a really helpful collaboration tool that made it easy to visualize what we were discussing and collaborate in real-time.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The level of expertise that they have available due to the size of their firm was astounding. As a result, we had access to experts in areas that we don’t have on our internal team.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, the process was pretty smooth. The only hiccup we had was coordinating meetings because we were in different time zones.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
We had a very collaborative relationship with them, so I would tell future clients to view them as a partner and share as much information with them as they can.
the project
Python Development Outsourcing for Ticket Sales Company
“I’d definitely recommend them. STX Next is available, and they have the tools to get a client rolling.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Tiqets has been around since 2014. We sell tickets for cultural events around the world, mostly museums. We have a curated website and app for tourists and local people to find the best spots to visit in their regions. Our main office is in Amsterdam, and we have sales offices around the world. They connect to museums, and we connect to suppliers that sell batches of tickets to the museums. Those are being delivered to the consumer via our platform.
My position is tech team manager. The company has been growing rapidly, from five people in 2014 to a development crew of about 50 people in September 2019, when I joined. We’re divided into different focus teams, which are multidisciplinary and with product owners, designers, tech leads, and back- and frontend developers. There is a team division, but there’s one CTO above all teams.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
Around 90% of our developers are in Amsterdam, but we like to have a flexible shell in order to adapt quickly to market needs. There’s also some work that’s more repetitive and less challenging, or challenging in a different way. We went to STX Next for their flexibility and expertise.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We started with one team at STX Next, and we split that up into two teams a couple of months ago. One team does API implementations while the other connects to high-end suppliers for integrations that demand specialized skills. The developers are in Poland, and they receive instructions from a product owner and tech lead in The Netherlands. Our coding language is Python.
What is the team composition?
They changed the team a short period before I joined Tiqets. I’m currently working with two managers, one for business aspects and one for day-to-day operations.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
One of the prerequisites for choosing them was having Python as a coding language. There are better-known software houses in Poland, but they don’t offer Python development. We looked at their website and portfolio, and we reached out to them to determine if we should move forward. We requested information from ten companies and made a shortlist based on that. STX Next wasn’t the cheapest, but they did have a big team of developers.
We’d worked with another Python development company, but they didn’t have as many developers. It would take them months to come up with new résumés if we asked for three more developers, whereas it's easier to scale up with STX Next.
How much have you invested with them?
It took us 3–4 months to get the team set up and working efficiently, with a cost of about €50,000 (approximately $56,900 USD). Right now, we’re paying €40,000–€50,000 per month (approximately $45,500–$56,900 USD).
What is the status of this engagement?
STX Next started working with the company before my time. I’m guessing that we’ve been working with them since early-2019 or late-2018. The collaboration is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
STX Next has a decent workforce, and the work that they do is productive and efficient. Whether it could be more efficient is not something I’ve tried to find out. The impact is that we have a good connection to suppliers, and we have a stable platform.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
I’m working with the general manager of their office. He is based in Wrocław, where we have our developers situated. He’s very approachable and cooperative in thinking through the different challenges we encounter working together.
From a cultural perspective, Eastern Europe is a bit more hierarchical. It’s basically a matter of telling them what to do and them doing it. It’s pretty productive from that perspective. We always try to stimulate more interactions, as in also getting their opinions as experts on certain matters. It takes some time to get that culture going, but I think we have a smooth operation. It does help that we have a product owner and two developers on our side. The project is controlled from the Amsterdam side and executed by the Polish team.
The developers themselves are working perfectly fine within our agile sprints, but it took some time to get started and to get used to each other. We’re using Slack for communication, Google Docs for documents, and Jira and Confluence for issue tracking, sprint setups, and measurements.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Compared to the other Python developer we’ve worked with, the fact that it’s so easy for STX Next to supply new profiles is pretty impressive. They have a big talent pool, and that makes them very flexible. If I asked them for three new developers by the following week, STX Next would be able to supply them.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Among the things we find important are people’s skill levels and their personalities and approach to the work. We like to have a pretty big hand in recruitment, and STX Next wants to put themselves down as having already estimated that a person is a good addition to our team, and we have to believe them. We find it very important that a person has certain personal traits and level of intelligence, and we like to play a part in that. If there’s an improvement point, it’s for them to be more flexible around that. There’s always a bit of a discussion when I tell them that I want to interview their resources, and that it’ll take me 60–90 minutes. It always leads to a return email with them saying that it’s not their normal route for doing things.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
Clients shouldn’t underestimate the starting phase. Taking in an external company doesn’t mean that they’ll have a full development team by the following week that will immediately build what the client wants them to. If the client is using the external company purely as an extension of the team that they have in their own office, that will lead to some configuration needs before everything is up and running.
the project
App Development for Social Media & Photo Sharing Platform
“It was a life-changing transition going with STX Next.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the founder of a social media and image sharing application that’s for electronic music festivals.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We had been working with a previous company for about six months, and the work that they were doing was extremely subpar and wasn’t meeting any of our agreements. The designs and code quality were bad. We brought on STX Next to save the project.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We went to them with a fully built application; all of the screens were technically completed, but everything was just poor quality visually and code-wise.
STX Next did a complete redo of the UI from the on-app perspective. They made the app look like the agreed-upon designs that we’d had with the previous company. From a backend perspective, they refactored and cleaned up a lot of the code. They also increased our code security and a lot of the functionality. I believe we closed around 75 tickets over the course of bringing the app to total usability. In that time, we made sure that all of the features we intended to have were actually within the app and working correctly.
What is the team composition?
I worked with Bartek (Head of React Native), a backend engineer, and a frontend React Native engineer.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
I actually found them on Clutch. I liked all of the positive reviews and their location in general. I reached out to 5–6 companies on Clutch, received proposals from all of them, and spoke to them on video chat. I had the most appealing conversation with STX Next.
How much have you invested with them?
We’re coming up on $30,000–$40,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
Our work together in March 2020, and we’re technically still working together through a continuing operation agreement. We were able to launch our app in June.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
It was a life-changing transition going with STX Next. The development cycle with our previous company was that we’d receive a build every couple of weeks, and it was always really disappointing. We had an ongoing conversation on Basecamp about stuff that needed to be changed. It didn’t feel like there was a really good way to establish good communication to identify specific bugs, so we were wasting tons of time making Excel spreadsheets of what needed to be done.
Once we brought in STX Next, it was a world of difference. We got a Slack channel set up so that we could communicate daily. I received builds almost every other day. We engaged in a new project management tool; they just came on board with whatever I wanted to use, which was fantastic. I was able to file tickets constantly and monitor all of the activities that were going on. It really increased our confidence in the business to know that work was being done, we were able to effectively file tickets, and we were having daily communication and daily builds. They gave us a lot more visibility into the development cycle.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
Everything kept on track. We provided them with a special challenge; when I presented them the project, I didn’t have a complete understanding of how much work it was going to be. Their original estimate was 4–5 weeks, but once they got into the code, it ended up taking three months of work to resolve it. That wasn’t their fault; that was our not representing the project correctly. Even though it was a really difficult project, they maintained a fantastic and super professional attitude throughout. They kept working with us and pushing back the deadline so that we could get the project squared away in a reasonable amount of time for the amount of work that was required.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The level of communication and involvement that we got from their team – especially since it was such a small project compared to what I’m sure they work on – sets them apart. It was really great to be able to work with their head of React Native and talk with their developers daily. For how little I felt the project was, we received excellent treatment, and I never had one complaint about the communication.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I have no complaints.
Any advice for potential customers?
Communication is key, as is being involved in the project. They’re super receptive to communication.
the project
Software Development Outsourcing for Business Standards Firm
“Based on their approach, I felt like they wanted our business to grow.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the head of new products and IT at GS1 Polska, a business standards firm. We are most known for barcodes that you can find on items sold in shops.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
I’m the only IT person in our office. We needed to outsource as much activity as possible, including software development. When we decided we wanted to launch a new product, we needed a company to help us with the development of our small, standard website.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We chose STX Next as a provider for two projects. For the first project, we created the product concept ourselves. We knew exactly what we wanted and prepared a functional specification. We had an extensive workshop with STX Next for a couple of days. We discussed the details of the functionalities that we wanted. After giving a cost estimate, they did the software development. We changed our requirements along the way; when we provided feedback, they acted accordingly.
The first project went live in January 2020, and they continue to provide support. We proposed the second project to them in December 2019, and then the same team that did the first project started the second one in January. They don’t have their own infrastructure, so they proposed using AWS. The first product is running in the cloud, and the second one will as well. They’re about to finish the second product.
What is the team composition?
There’s a product owner. The full team was present during all of our meetings. It was great having people that were already familiar with our business work on our second project.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We started getting quotes from different companies in March 2019. Another GS1 company in UAE referred STX Next. We trust our colleagues from different countries. STX Next is based in the same city as us, which we consider an advantage. They’re a Polish company, so there isn’t a language or cultural barrier. We don’t regret hiring them.
How much have you invested with them?
My company has spent $250,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in August 2019, and the work is ongoing. We have a plan to collect more requirements, and we’ll probably invest in the system again. Due to COVID-19, our revenue has dropped a bit, so we won’t invest until next year.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Their development work is good. Users have said that they like the application, the functionality, and the user interface. Comments have been positive. The number of users on the app isn’t as high as we expected, but this isn’t STX Next’s issue; it’s our problem that we decided to fashion up different functionality. We didn’t recognize the needs of our customers in a very good way.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
For both projects, we worked in an agile scrum methodology. We went through our requirements step-by-step. Based on the specifics we prepared, they did a final, more detailed cost estimate. During the first project, the sprints were every two weeks. By the second project, they knew that we change our requirements often, so they decided on one-week sprints. Demos are also weekly.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They listen. They don’t force us to go their way; instead, they follow our way of thinking. During our tender, other companies said they’d want to keep the intellectual rights for the software they’d develop. STX Next said we could just rent their team of developers, and that we would be the owner of whatever they created. They didn’t want to be the owner of it.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They’re good at creating software. I think more and more companies want not only software development but also maintenance. They didn’t offer maintenance at first, but when we insisted that we wanted them to be our maintenance company also, they did it for us. I think they should do it for more companies. Also, they proposed only AWS, which is probably the most expensive.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
They are a company who listens to you. Based on their approach, I felt like they wanted our business to grow. They’re very supportive.
the project
Python Development for Investment Management Firm
“They’re very inquisitive engineers, plugged in designers, and want to know your business in a genuine way.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the COO of the front office technology team of an investment management firm.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
The demand for Python developers in cities like London, Boston, and New York is fairly intense. We’re very much a Python shop and we invest a lot of time in our recruiting process and hiring standards. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to find good talent in those geographic hubs and so we wanted to expand our talent pool. We were looking for a firm with a track record of expertise.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We’ve undertaken two main approaches with them. We started with a standalone project where we wished to enhance data discovery via a rich and interactive frontend. It was a relatively packaged up type process. Alongside STX Next, we gathered requirements from end-users, and STX Next provisioned a team that worked alongside our in-house data engineering team to build that out.
A month later, we kicked off a team augmentation approach also. During this project, STX Next provided engineers to augment our existing engineering team, which was aligned to our discretionary hedge fund building out tooling for the portfolio. The STX Next engineers became part of that team’s daily workflow, their prioritization process, and engage directly with their end-users.
What is the team composition?
They brought a team of engineers with a mix of front- and backend. They had a product owner on their side, which was really key to the success. They came to London and we did design sessions in-person. The product owner really built up a very good understanding of our business, as did all of the engineers. They handled the project management for the standalone project.
In the team augmentation set up, they provided the engineers, and we provided the project and product management.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We knew them from a few years back when we used them to build out a performance attribution tool which is still in use to this day. We were aware that they positioned themselves as Python specialists, and it felt there would be natural synergy in partnering up with them.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent about $1 million.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in June 2019, and the work is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We’re happy with the results on the standalone project approach as well as the team augmentation. From the very start of the data catalog piece they built for us, they were thinking about how to track adoption metrics for this tool when it gets released into the world. We have a set of metrics for that particular tool that we can see the uptake in our user base. I can only characterize it as a success.
We started with one standalone project, one small team augmentation, and we have since added some of their resources in the DevOps space with ongoing maintenance. The fact that we’re adding more building blocks into this STX Next ecosystem tells you about our conviction to work with them.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
They do product management in addition to project management. They have a well-honed, agile delivery process. The other element that really complements that is they are incredibly strong in design.
They have a very capable design team of in-house designers. That’s a great leverage effect for any firm that doesn’t have that in-house expertise, to be able to draw upon that and get that rich design layer built into your products. It creates a very nice UX on an end-to-end basis. They really want to get to know your company. They’re very disciplined.
We wanted to spend that first year learning how to best interact with them. Now we’re in a place where we can plan for potentially more work.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I spent a lot of time speaking with other firms in the analysis phase of this initiative. STX Next had built a really nice culture, one that we felt would be compatible with ours. They’re very inquisitive engineers, plugged in designers, and want to know your business in a genuine way.
Are there any areas they could improve?
When we first started working with them, I don’t think the finance industry was their biggest vertical. There has been a learning curve of domain knowledge. The nature of their firm is they will provide their services pretty much across industries.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Do a proof of concept. Pick a project and make it something not too scary and not too close to your core intellectual property. Embrace the STX Next way of doing things as a starting point. The process can be adapted to suit your team’s working style but get a sense of how they would approach it so that you can map the differences and similarities. They will come to your office to carry out rich design and requirement gathering sessions with your end-users. It is critical that you spend that initial few weeks answering all the questions that they ask and prompting them to ask you 10 more questions. The more time you spend with them upfront, really getting them to understand your business domain knowledge, the better the work they will deliver.
the project
Machine Learning Development for AI Technology Startup
“We felt fortunate to work with the people that were on our team. They’re good people.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
My organization is a tech startup that uses AI to automate technology scouting for Fortune 500 companies, venture capitalists, and foundations.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We’re a startup and we were building up the team. We need to figure out all the moving pieces and find an expert in machine learning specifically for text and classification to help build our product.
What was the scope of their involvement?
They executed our design of a machine learning classification system. They helped us develop the data pipelines to import the data to be classified and all the deployment to production. The project included everything from the data pipeline to the deployment of machine learning algorithms and models.
What is the team composition?
We had a machine learning engineer, a data engineer, and a full stack developer.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
One of my employees did research and compared the various options out there. STX Next wasn’t the cheapest option out there, but they offered a good, reliable value.
We reached out to STX Next about creating another product. They’re experts in Python and learned they had machine learning in-house, which is difficult to find. We liked that they’ve worked together before because it pays dividends to have a team with established communication patterns. It’s just more efficient.
How much have you invested with them?
It would have been between $15,000–$20,000 per month, so I’d guess around $150,000–$200,000 in total.
What is the status of this engagement?
The project lasted from September 2019 – June 2020.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
With their help, we were able to scale our innovation data from about 5,000 innovation records to 200,000 innovation records.
On the machine learning side, the project enabled us to onboard a team of five people for data sanitation, so no our data can be scrubbed and cleaned. This positions us for scalability.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
It was excellent. They delivered what they said they were going to deliver and their estimates for how long it would take were accurate. Our own product manager sets the priorities and timelines on our side. Their side found the staff to fill our needs. We used Jira to keep track of everything.
What did you find most impressive about them?
We felt fortunate to work with the people that were on our team. They’re good people.
Are there any areas they could improve?
We’re an Austin-based company, and the rigidity to sticking to Polish hours was a challenge. It wasn’t an independent piece of work, so we needed to collaborate. It would have helped if we had the flexibility and their hours overlapped with our hours in the US.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Make sure you have leadership in-house to guide the project. An in-house team leader can help manage the project and make sure everything is moving along.
the project
Custom Python Development for Cybersecurity Startup
"They understood our specifications without much explanation, which was better than our experiences with past vendors."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CEO of a cybersecurity startup.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We wanted to outsource development tasks related to a custom software project. We needed a team with experience in Python.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We provided the specifications and requirements for the software and then STX developed two modules using Python. Their team wrote code as well as managed front- and backend development for their designated tasks.
What is the team composition?
STX dedicated a project manager, developers, and other tech teammates to this project.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We considered a couple of different companies. We liked STX’s experience with Python and their processes, which were similar to ours.
What is the status of this engagement?
We worked together from November 2019 – March 2020.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Before they started to write code, STX brought in a team to understood the specifications because this project was crucial. It had to be finished on time and coded well. If it wasn't, we would've had to return the funding or come up with additional funding internally. We were pleased with the overall quality of their work.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
The communication was open and honest. We used e-mail, a ticketing system, source code systems, Microsoft Teams, and Google platforms. We also had a few scheduled meetings as well as on-demand calls when necessary.
Their team met their deadlines. When we couldn’t meet our deadlines, they were flexible.
What did you find most impressive about them?
We liked their DevOps culture, which was similar to ours and made for a smoother partnership. Their team was knowledgeable, especially in Python. They understood our specifications without much explanation, which was better than our experiences with other vendors. During the next round of development, we will definitely work with them.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They aren’t the cheapest. However, you get what you pay for with development.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I can only recommend them regarding working with Python.
The team at STX Next delivers high-quality work that helps generate new business and revenue. Their skilled developers are communicative and quick. Customers can expect an engaged team of developers that performs well.