About Hashorn
An engineering studio for teams that ship.
Hashorn pairs senior engineers with AI workflows to ship software faster, without the bug, breach, or burnout tax. We're built for foreign-funded startups, SaaS companies, agencies, and enterprises modernizing legacy stacks.
The thesis
Help great teams ship faster, without the bug, breach, or burnout tax.
In the AI era, software gets written faster than it gets reviewed, tested, secured, or operated. Most teams glue together AI-generated code, skip QA, push to production, and find out about the bugs on Monday.
We started Hashorn because that's not engineering, it's hoping. So we built one team that does build, test, secure, and operate together, using AI as a force multiplier for senior humans, not a replacement for them.
No twelve-week discovery decks. No agencies of juniors guarded by one senior. No black-box AI promises. Just senior engineers, weekly demos, and the kind of accountability you'd expect from your own team.
By the numbers
Small studio, deliberate by design. No padding, no bench warmers.
Years average engineer experience across the team.
Disciplines under one roof, build, test, secure, operate, design.
Time zones with overlap, US, UK, EU, and ME.
Sprint commitment hit rate across our last 12 months of dedicated-pod work.
What we believe
Four ideas that show up in everything we ship.
Engineering, not magic.
AI is a tool. The team behind the tool is what matters. We hire for taste, accountability, and the willingness to say no when AI gets it wrong.
Speed plus accountability.
Weekly demos. Real software. The opposite of "we'll show you next quarter." If we can't demo it Friday, we don't claim it Monday.
Async-first by default.
We work across time zones with US, UK, EU, and ME clients. Documentation is the first deliverable, not the last.
Knowledge stays with you.
Runbooks, decision logs, and onboarding docs ship with every feature. Your team can maintain everything we build after we leave.
Disciplines on the team
Six disciplines, one delivery unit. Senior-only, by policy.
No vendor handoffs between dev, QA, and security. The same humans who write the code review it, test it, secure it, and operate it.
Engineering
Senior product engineers who own architecture, taste, and every PR, augmented by AI for review and scaffolding.
Quality
QA engineers who write the assertions AI can't be trusted with, and the regression suites that catch what unit tests miss.
Security
Threat modeling, code review, and DevSecOps wiring built into every sprint, not bolted on before the audit.
Design
UI and UX work for product surfaces and customer-facing flows. We design what we build; we don't hand off to design.
AI
LLM serving, evaluation pipelines, prompt management, and the agentic glue that turns models into products.
Operations
Project management, delivery, on-call coverage, and the unglamorous work that keeps weekly demos on schedule.
Where we work
Async-first across four time zones.
Built from the start to overlap with US, UK, European, and Middle Eastern clients. Documentation is the deliverable; meetings are the exception.
Americas
NYC · SF · Toronto
8h overlap
United Kingdom
London · Manchester
Full overlap
Europe
Berlin · Amsterdam · Lisbon
Full overlap
Middle East
Dubai · Riyadh
9h overlap
Working with us
What you can expect, every time.
Five things we promise on every engagement. They're not aspirational, they're the Definition of Done.
- 01
We start with a 30-min call.
No deck, no NDA gymnastics. Tell us what you're building; we'll tell you, honestly, whether we're the right fit.
- 02
We scope in writing.
A one-page brief with goals, milestones, and a fixed-price proposal. You read it. We adjust. We don't ship before we agree.
- 03
We demo every Friday.
Working software each week. Not status updates, not slide decks, running code you can click on.
- 04
We document as we go.
Architecture decisions, runbooks, and onboarding docs are part of the Definition of Done. They ship with the feature.
- 05
Knowledge stays with you.
Whatever we build, your team can maintain after we leave. We share, train, and hand over, that's the goal from day one.
How engagements run
Every Hashorn engagement runs on BuildOS.
BuildOS is the AI-driven project workspace we built for ourselves and our clients. It's how a weekly demo cadence is actually sustainable, how AI-generated work stays accountable, and how a founder or CTO can see the same picture we see, without us emailing weekly status updates.
- 01
Meetings become roadmaps in hours, not weeks.
Every kickoff and decision call is summarized by AI. Highlights, action items, and owners are surfaced before the call ends.
- 02
Requirements and tasks are typed, prioritised, traceable.
P0–P2 priority, FEATURE / TECH / POLICY type, and a back-link to the exact meeting that produced the requirement.
- 03
Every task carries QA & security checklists.
No engineer picks up work that hasn't been thought through for testing, hardening, and abuse paths.
- 04
You see what we see.
Your CTO, founder, or PM gets read-only access to the same workspace from day one. Friday demos, weekly velocity, drift on commitments, all visible without us sending status emails.
Included with every engagement. Provisioned on day one.
Develop
2/3- Stripe Issuing webhook handler
- Ledger primitives + migrations
- Cardholder dashboard skeleton
QA
1/3- Idempotency tests for webhooks
- Ledger imbalance regression
- E2E: cardholder onboarding
Security
2/3- Verify PCI scope boundary
- Webhook signature validation
- Rate limit on /refund endpoint
Engage us
Got something to ship?
Project, dedicated pod, audit, or discovery sprint, we'll tell you, honestly, whether we're the right fit for your work.
Book an intro callJoin us
Senior engineers, MLOps, ML, and product folks.
Hiring is open across engineering, MLOps, ML, product, and analytics. Six-plus years of experience, async-first, taste required. Five roles open right now.
See open rolesBuild with us, or for us.
Engagements and roles are both open conversations. Tell us what you're working on.