Services
Three ways to work with us.
Get an answer, get senior judgement in the room, or bring in an engineer for the problem that has to be right. We don’t own your whole build. We take on the parts where being wrong is expensive.
Start here
Diagnosis
Know what to stop, change and keep before you spend the money.
£500 + VAT, fixed fee
Founder-led
Technical Co-Founder
Tesh and Kaz in the room until you’re ready to hire your own senior leader.
£2–5k + VAT a month
Embedded
Forward Deployed Engineer
A named engineer or pod inside your team, on one specific problem.
From £650 + VAT a day
Who we work with
We do our best work where the data has to be right.
Founders
You’re making architecture and AI calls that investors and regulators will pick apart later.
Startups
You’ve built a data product and need a regulated customer to sign for it.
Scale-ups
You built fast, and now there’s due diligence, a licence application or a raise on the way.
Enterprise teams
You need to prove a big idea on real data, within real controls, and get the business behind it.
Where we’re strongest
FinTech, core banking and financial services, retail and commercial lending, B2B data products, HealthTech and MedTech, and ESG and nature data.
What we design around from day one
FCA authorisation and reporting, UK GDPR and consent, audit trails and data lineage, model explainability and industry data standards.
Start here
Diagnosis
£500 + VAT, fixed fee
What we review
- Your idea, scope and build plan
- Your stack, data model and data sources
- The regulation and standards that apply
- Agency, vendor and AI platform quotes
What you get
- A written stop, change, keep report
- A regulatory and data-standards risk check
- A 90-day technical roadmap
- A line-by-line review of any quote
You’ll have it within 3 working days of us receiving everything we ask for.
Founder-led
Technical Co-Founder on Retainer
£2,000–£5,000 + VAT a month
Tesh: what to build, and how to fund it
Product, commercial model, regulators and capital, plus your investor story and due-diligence pack.
Kaz: whether, and how, to use AI and data
Architecture, data and AI decisions. That includes when a spreadsheet beats a model, and when it doesn’t.
- Included: architecture, data and AI decisions, vendor, agency and hiring calls, board and investor meetings, a technical due-diligence pack, oversight of any Daedalus engineers, and your senior technical hire and handover.
Embedded
Forward Deployed Engineer
From £650 + VAT a day, or priced against the result
Named
Edward, Patrik, Dylan or Ken. You meet them before they start.
Embedded
They work in your repositories, your standups and your tools, not a parallel universe of ours.
AI-accelerated, human-owned
The best AI tooling, with a named engineer reviewing and owning every change.
Handed over
Code, credentials, documentation and a walkthrough, all included in the price.
Typically 1–12 working weeks
Sized to the system you need live, not to keep an engineer on the bill.
14 days’ notice
Either side, at any point. The handover is included whenever it ends.
A clear brief and measurable KPIs
That’s how we both judge success. If you don’t have them yet, that’s what the Diagnosis is for.
What the engineers do
Built for the hard parts of high-stakes systems.
Embed with your team
Join your calls, learn your domain and turn loosely defined workflows into working software.
Build AI-native
Work with coding agents every day, within boundaries that are checked automatically. Agents included.
Handle high-stakes workflows
Multi-party financial processes with audit trails, step-up authentication and state changes that stay correct under load.
Deliver real-time data
Streaming on Kafka and Flink, with results that stay correct when data arrives late or services fail.
Own the full stack
From database and API through to interface, cloud infrastructure and deployment.
Secure accounts and payments
Passkeys, one-time passcodes and recovery codes, plus subscriptions, usage and payment setup.
- AI engineering
- Claude Code, Codex
- Languages and apps
- TypeScript, Kotlin, Python, Next.js, React, GraphQL
- Data and streaming
- PostgreSQL, Kafka, Flink, Debezium, Kysely, WebSockets
- Cloud and infrastructure
- AWS, Pulumi
- Identity and security
- Keycloak, passkeys, one-time passcodes, step-up authentication
How it runs
Four steps, and no surprises on the invoice.
- Diagnose. We map the problem, the data and the rules you have to meet.
- Decide. One recommendation, one price and one timeline. If it isn’t worth building, we’ll say so.
- Deploy. A named engineer builds inside your team, with Tesh and Kaz overseeing the approach.
- Hand over. We write everything down and walk you through it, so you can run it without us.
How we use AI
Fast tools, with a person accountable.
- Boundaries the machines can’t cross. Rules are checked automatically, so nobody has to rely on good behaviour.
- A second pair of eyes, every time. Someone who didn’t write the change reviews it, and it ships with evidence that it works.
- Your data stays out of public models. Full stop. We agree the tools with you before they touch your systems.
How we compare.
| Question | Dev shops | Large consultancies | Daedalus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Whoever is free on the bench | A partner sells, and a team you never meet delivers | Named engineers, with Tesh and Kaz on every engagement |
| What they’re paid to do | A bigger build | A longer programme | The outcome we agree before work starts |
| Regulation and data standards | Learned on your budget | A separate risk workstream | Designed in from the first diagram |
| AI-written code | Shipped as generated | Governed in a slide deck | Used daily, reviewed and owned by a named engineer |
| When it ends | When the budget does | When the next phase is sold | With a documented handover |
What clients ask us first.
Do you use AI to write code?
Every day, because it makes us faster. It doesn’t take responsibility, though, so a named engineer reviews and owns every change, and Tesh and Kaz sign off every approach.
Will you take on our whole build?
No, and that’s deliberate. We take on the specific problems that have to be right, and your team or your agency keeps the rest. If you need help choosing or challenging that agency, the Diagnosis covers it.
Who owns what you build?
You do. The code lives in your repositories from day one, and the handover is part of the price.
Do you only work in financial services?
Regulated finance and data is our core, but the shape of the problem matters more than the sector. If your data has to satisfy a regulator, an auditor or an acquirer, we’re probably a good fit.
Can we skip the Diagnosis and go straight to an engineer?
Yes, if you can give us a clear brief and measurable KPIs. If you can’t, the Diagnosis gives you both within 3 working days.
Are you tied to OpenAI, Anthropic or a cloud provider?
No. We work with coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex, but we choose the model, cloud and tools that suit your problem and your regulator, and we don’t resell anything.
Not sure where to start?
A free hour with Tesh and Kaz. You’ll leave knowing which one fits, or that you don’t need us at all.